A Green Sun Illuminates the Void
by EarthScorpion
Summary: Louise the Zero. A failure even at summoning a familiar. But now she has a second chance, access to power beyond the Void. Soon a new day shall dawn on Halkeginia, its light green and terrible and beautiful. They don't know what's going to hit them. Book I in the Verdigris and Flame Sequence.
1. Words from Beyond I

**A G****reen Sun Illuminates the Void**

**An Exalted / Familiar of Zero Story

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**Prologue: Words From Beyond I  


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**Of the Fall of Mardukth, and of the love of Lyranvais (The Whispering Void)**

_In lost Zen-mu, which is no more, which was born of the songs of the Primordials when time itself was young, and the nascent titans warred against the shapelessness of that which now lies outside Creation, the flames of Cytherea, the Divine Ignition, burned away the dross of possibility to leave that which was desired by her and her kin. No longer did the other titans, barring of course Oramus, the Dragon Outside the World, dwell within the mind of the Divine Ignition, for they had learned the invention of wakefulness, and thus they lived and dreamed and played with eyes wide open, seeing the infinite possibility before them, and just as Cytherea, they disdained the infinite possibility to bring concrete visions into being._

_And such was Zen-mu shaped, and the drums of the Primordial beat into existence time such that the vicissitudes of the Wyld could not say 'that was never so' and make it so, for as long as the drums were played and the songs of Adrián, the River of Torments, sung, and the dreams dreamed, that which had happened had always happened. And from the changing outside of Zen-mu, the hordes came, but against the fires and ice and blades of Adrián, they fell, and she inflicted infinite torments against them for daring to assault the playground of the dreamers, and all was happy._

_And so it came to pass that the the Empyreal Chaos came to Zen-mu, his sister Cecelyne and him, and though none knew it, the Whispering Flame, too; the three conveyed across the vitriolic waters of Kimbery through the machinations of the Ultimate Darkness. And Mardukth, He Who Holds In Thrall, did protest against the presence of the Holy Tyrant, for in these lands he had been King, and Zen-mu had beat to his will and spoke his name to him, and he would not give that up easily. The Holy Tyrant and he did war, then, and their conflict was long and terrible, for the waters of Zen-mu did rise up against the Empyreal Chaos, and the earth pelt at his immaterial majesty and the fires of light burn ardent, and the winds themselves sought to convey him back across Kimbery, to stretch the unbounded sands of his sister, Cecelyne, such that the Holy Tyrant could never again return to Zen-mu._

_The Empyreal Chaos was contemptuous, and, flanked by his twin fetich souls, Ligier and Ruvelia, spoke two words. And Mardukth was afraid._

_Of the rest of the conflict, it is forbidden to speak. It is only permitted to be said that Mardukth was cast down, and the Empyreal Chaos became the Primordial King, and accepted the fealty of he who ruled in his place before. But one thing is not forbidden, though it is not remembered, and that is that Lyranvais, the Echoing Void, did watch this conflict, and she fell in love with the Holy Tyrant, __with his power and his majesty and the way that all would kneel before him, and she longed for him, forsaking her impossible love for Gaia, who did not love her back, to take on an even more impossible mantle of desire, for that was in her nature._

_And, as was her nature, she said nothing, because she was afraid.

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	2. 1: And then, all was unfamiliar

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 1: And then, all was unfamiliar

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The sun shone down, from on high, down onto a field in Tristain. The chill of the morning was still barely present, although rapidly departing, and the faintest hint of dew was still present on the grass, which made the shoes on the feet of the gaggle of students and their teacher squeak slightly. But, still, it was a lovely spring morning, and the clarity of the sky above declared that it was only going to get more pleasant. There were birds on the field, tiny sparrows in the sun and a number of large grey cranes in the nearby pond. It was a lovely day for getting close to nature.

"Urgh," one of the boys said, staring down at his feet. "I think I've trodden in something."

"Well, then, Guiche, perhaps you should look where you are going, and not at the other girls then," the girl beside him, blond hair in ringlets, replied acerbically.

"Aww, Montmorency, my love, you know I only have eyes for you."

And, indeed, the gentle warm wind, when combined with the sun above, the hints of dew, and the rich earth below gave the perfect elemental correspondence for this day. It was the first day of spring, and thus, for the prestigious Tristain Academy of Magic, it was by some reckonings the most important day of the year. Today was the day when each student in the second year summoned their familiar, just as Brimir had, long ago, just as every mage did, just as had been done by every student before them.

Or, at least, every mage who had not dropped out of the Academy in utter ignominy. And for one Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, this was a noted fear. It should have always been easy for her. Her bloodline was impeccable. Her genealogy could be traced back 600 years, and contained no commoners, none of the magic-less plebeians who might leave her weaker. Her family was one of the wealthiest in the nation; indeed, in the whole of the known world, rivalled only by the rumours of the decadent fortunes of the elves and of the strange lands, further east. Her mother was Karin, of the "heavy wind", and that alone spoke volumes of the skill that she should have. Only the royal lineage, carrying the blood of Brimir himself, held more potential.

And despite these things, despite every advantage, she was a failure. A weakling. A zero, as her classmates called her, lacking any skill at magic. They could fly; she could, at best, irregularly generate explosions, no matter what she was attempting. In a more normal family, there would have been the tag of 'bastard', but it was her mother who was the prodigy, and the family resemblance was clear. There could be no accidental swaps at birth, no adulterous affairs, nothing to explain what was so wrong with her.

It was just her. The failure.

The zero.

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Louise subconsciously shivered, and wrapped her cloak tighter around herself. She hated this, hated doing it in public. Why was it necessary to do it in front of others? Why couldn't they carefully take each student out on their own, give them time to get the summoning right, and then let them get to know their familiar? Certainly, she knew that others were afraid of getting something weak, inferior, or ugly. She envied them. They didn't seem to worry about nothing happening. Of course not. They didn't have to worry about what Mother would say or the look on Father's face or the slight sneer that Eléonore would have, or... or...

No. She took a breath, and steadied herself. Maybe she should have gone to bed earlier last night. But she'd stayed up so late pouring over the ritual, staring at it until it seemed that it was burned into the back of her eyelids and that she could see it with her eyes shut.

"Watch where you're going, Zero!"

Louise opened her eyes again, despite her desire otherwise. Maybe if she closed her eyes, she could pretend that everyone else had failed too, and she was going to be the first to succeed.

But, no, as student after student paraded through, with their incantations and their successes and their... okay, what was the thing with the eye? Well, maybe she didn't want one of those, thought it would be better than nothing, but, still, she would like something like...

... she gritted her teeth. Damn that von Zerbst and her large-breasted ability to summon a salamander. It was probably a male salamander, wasn't it! Men and their stupid ability to fall for that Germanian... Germanian... argh!

Louise was aware that this was not the _most_ rational chain of thought she had ever had. It certainly wasn't jealousy... well, it was.

"Miss Vallière. It's your turn," her professor, Colbert, said. He was a good teacher, he was. She'd asked him so many questions in the run up to this, run over the procedure time and time again with him. He... he didn't treat her as some kind of magicless Germanian noble, who'd bought their way into a title, like some of the other teachers did. It wasn't anything overt. If it had been overt she could have done something. Anything. But it was just the glance out of the corner of an eye, the way that they pushed her away from further study when she really, really wanted to know, the faint sighs when she answered something correctly, as if they felt that this knowledge was going to waste by her having it.

It would be not inaccurate to say that this scion of the Vallière family was not the most happy person, from her constant litany of failures.

Colbert cleared his throat. "Miss Vallière," he prompted again, as above his head, a flock of birds cast a momentary shadow down across the field.

"Oh. Yes." She cleared her throat, and drew her wand. "Thank you."

"Zero attention span, too," someone said from behind her, and her knuckles whitened around the stick.

This was it, she thought, as she deliberately placed one foot after the other on the still-drying grass. This was it. Her last chance to do well. Her last chance to make Mother proud.

She took a deep breath, and knelt down with the chalk and the knife... knife... knife... aha! She ignored the giggles, and picked it up off the ground, where it had fallen out of her pocket. Carefully, slowly, laboriously, she marked the circle into the ground, taking it slowly and checking that all of the elemental correspondences were in place. And then she checked again, lips pursed, resisting the urge to scream, hide, whimper, or, more meaningfully, play with her hair. She ignored the flapping noise of something taking off from the pond; this was everything for her.

She began, with words that she had drilled herself on, over and over again. Each word was enunciated perfectly. Her wand motions were mechanical, drilled, elegant. This was the culmination of her life, her last change.

And all she got for it was another explosion. Not even a very large one; just a wispy shudder, that filled the air with dirt. An explosion, and the shriek of an injured bird.

Louise coughed, wiping her sleeve against her face, and recoiled at the thing before her. A large grey crane was spread on the earth before her, clearly in pain from the noise it was making. From the noise it was making one, maybe both of its wings were broken. But still... she had succeeded! Maybe not a manticore, like Mother had, or even a salamander, but a crane was a much better familiar than... than a frog, like what Montmorency _the Flood_ had! It was beautiful, controlled, a symbol of grace and elegance!

Quickly, as if this were a dream, she knelt down, and, calling upon the elements, wand in hand, she blessed her new familiar, sealing the contract as was customary, with a kiss to its head.

Nothing happened.

And the broken-winged crane lashed out at her, thrashing around on the floor, only hurting itself more, savaging her leg with its beak and sharp feet. She leapt back with a squeak, blood seeping from her torn leg, to land heavily on her behind, and scramble away in an undignified way that left both her hand and bottom wet and muddy.

There was laughter from behind her.

"Miss Vallière." She looked up, to see Colbert looking down at her with pity in his eyes. "That's... that's one of the school birds."

"B-b-but," she stammered, "I summoned it, right?"

He shook his head, slowly. "No. It was flying over, and... well, the explosion knocked it out of the air."

The laughter only grew louder, as she sunk down, tears welling up. No. She wouldn't cry. A Vallière didn't cry.

"Bird-kisser of zero!"

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with bird kissing!" snapped a boy, with a red face, his new starling familiar sitting on his shoulder.

"Yeah, but it's not her familiar. It's just a random bird."

"Maybe she just likes it."

Of course, a Vallière was also a proper mage, not some... some useless plebeian commoner like her who couldn't even do the most basic summoning. Welling deep in misery, she just stayed slumped down, tears running down her face. She knew she should do something. She knew that she should pull herself together, get angry, acknowledge the fact that Colbert was being nice, and telling her that she could try again when everyone else had their go.

It wasn't going to work. She knew it.

And after she had tried, again and again and again, after they had moved the poor, crippled bird from the circle and let her redraw it, after the morning dew had dried up and the auspicious signs had ended... well, even Colbert had given up.

The laughter had stopped. It had stopped being funny when the Zero couldn't even seem to be able to make her customary explosions, each time she had to restart the incantation because she broke down part-way through.

She would have taken their laughter if it would have just meant that she had succeeded.

"That's... that's enough," the teacher said, gently lowering her wand arm, after nothing had happened yet again. "Miss Vallière... please. I'm sure you'll be able to stay, and... certainly, your theoretical marks are good, and you can certainly put in the effort. And... well, maybe you'll be able to try again next year."

"Yeah," Kirche von Zerbst, said, any customary antagonism gone. "Maybe... maybe you're just a late bloomer. It doesn't mean that..."

There was a hate-filled glance, directed at the Germanian's chest. "Shut. Up."

"I didn't mean it that w..."

"Shut up!"

Drying her tears on her sleeves, Louise marched off, ignoring those of the others who tried to talk to her.

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She returned that night. It was going to be one of her last nights here, she knew. There was no way that she could stay here, not when the ignominy of her complete failure to even summon a familiar was taken into account. Before, at least, she had been able to keep going with the promise to herself that she would manage to get a familiar, to show them all. It was what she had orientated the last year around. And now... nothing. Just a vast, gaping void, a Vallière without magic. She would probably have to return home, to face Mother and Father and her sisters, and look forwards to a life as a noble without magic, like... like some Germanian. What could she even do?

That was why she had snuck back. The ceremony of summoning a familiar was never to be done at night; that was one of the single great rules. The elements were utterly out of balance, for the Fire of the sun was gone, and the Void of the night sky dominated, the mystical power that was not truly understood throwing the summoning out of synch. But she didn't care. They called her the zero, the nothing, the useless one. Well, let the Void take her, then! This life was akin to death, so why not take the chance that she might get a familiar? Why not.

Bending down again, like she had so often today, she began to mark the elemental pentagram in, in green chalk. She had the book, borrowed from the library, open in front of her, and she would make it perfect. You weren't meant to have the book with you, but... she didn't care. The people who'd put that rule in obviously didn't ever have to face the fact that their magic only blew things up, when it even worked.

It was ready. Under the light of the two moons, high above, she carried out the summoning.

And...

... nothing. No fire. No explosion. No creature from beyond tearing her apart.

Just... nothing.

Louise fell to her knees, staring into the night, and stayed that way for quite a long time. Even when he came to her senses, she barely retained the state of mind to smudge the chalk, which would blend in with the other circles.

She somehow felt that it would be appropriate for it to start raining, leaving her drenched to the bone, but the world wouldn't even give her that. It just stayed clear, calm, with a slight nip in the air from how early in the season it was.

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Her mood had degenerated into being truly vile by the time that she had made her way down to the kitchens. At this point, she hated the world almost as much as she hated her failures, so she was not exactly polite to the commoners down there, and the stammering, dark-haired maid who actually bought her the platter of food she demanded. Technically she wasn't meant to do such things, but the staff knew better than to argue with a mage and a noble who looked like that, and obviously the news of how much of a failure she was hadn't reached them yet. It was just as well. She should take advantage of the food here, which was, really, truly good, before she had to leave. And she was hungry; she had skipped lunch and dinner.

Knuckles white around the tray, she headed back up to her room, and...

"Hey, Louise, what're you doing with all that food?"

... after shooting a hate-filled glare at a darker-skinned Germanian, she stepped into her room, slamming the door behind her. And then she turned, grabbed a nearby piece of parchment, scribbled "DON'T EVEN KNOCK!" on it, and folded it over the door. 'That should show them!' she thought, as she locked the door behind her.

It was dark in her room, and with a frown, she put the platter of food down on the side, and clicked her fingers, bringing the magical light to life. And then she yelped. Because sitting, no, _lounging_ on the bed was... something. Something pink-skinned and hairless. Something with large dark eyes that left her feeling slightly hot under the collar. Something most definitely female, by the level of shockingly indecent levels of flesh exposed, and yet not human.

She yelped.

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"Now, please don't be like that," the thing said, rubbing its legs together sinuously, and propping itself up on its elbows. "I'm not going to hurt you." It grinned, a wicked little smile that revealed teeth made of brass. "Quite the opposite, actually."

"Wh-what are you," Louise barked, once she was sure that she wasn't going to collapse. She had her wand out, levelled between its eyes, with a hand which, to her credit, was only shaking a bit. She might not be able to actually do anything, but this thing wouldn't know it. "Own up! Who's painted themselves pink!" She glanced down at its chest. "Kirche! Get out of my room!" she hazarded.

The creature stood up, almost slithering off the bed, and smiled wider. Louise squinted. Was it... was it shifting in shape? Becoming taller, more muscular, more masculine.

Yes. Yes, it was.

"What are you?" she whispered, for a second time.

"I?" the now-male thing, still alien in colouration and features asked. Its accent, the way it pronounced the language of Tristain was exotic, foreign, formal, and oddly lyrical. "I have been given many names. Marisalon, Two Peaks, You, It, Thing." It paused. "I like Marisalon," it admitted. "One of my former masters gave it to me, and I liked her. But..."

"Masters." That one word sunk into Louise's head. "You're... you're a familiar!" she blurted out, her mind suddenly afire with hope and possibilities.

"I have been in the past," it... no, it was really a 'he' right now, said placing a hand over his right breast. "And," he looked down at her, "please, sit." He gestured her over to her own seat.

"You do not get to tell me to sit," she responded, pulling out the old Vallière imperious manner.

"Fine," the man-thing said, running a long-fingered hand over his head. There was something subtly wrong about the hand, Louise felt, with a shudder. Nevertheless, on reflection, it had been a long day, without enough food, and she was starting to feel faint. Slowly, in a manner which she hoped would convey that she was not doing it because she had been told to, she sat down.

"Sit!" she commanded, and indeed, the pink-skinned man obeyed, somehow managing to lounge on hard, cold tiles. Putting her hands to her face, she rubbed tired eyes, and retrieved the food. "So... you _were_ a familiar," she said, taking a drink, and trying to obscure her interest.

"Yes. Not at the moment, but I have been summoned before," the main replied, his dark eyes locked on her, in a way which felt... well, it felt adoring. Louise thought back to those nights, and those dreams of Viscount Wardes; there was more than a certain bit of him about that face. It wasn't anything she knew for sure, nothing concrete, but... she took another drink. Why, it was certainly getting warm in here. And that smell, that... she couldn't describe it, but it was _incredibly_ pleasant.

"Then... why are you here?" she asked, barely daring to ask the question.

"You called me," he said, simply. "From the depths of the Eastern jungles, where I was searching, drawn by... potential, I was called to you."

The pink-haired girl dropped her cup, with a clatter. It was a sign of the emotional conflagration within her that she did not even try to pick it up. "I... summoned you," she whispered. "I... it worked! It actually worked! I... I thought it had failed! I thought it was just another failure, that I was going... going to be..." she trailed off, taking a deep breath, and reasserting control. It wasn't done to show such weakness to a familiar. "The east?" she asked. "That would explain why you took so long," she remarked, trying to put this...thing onto a back foot. "I haven't ever heard of a familiar being called from beyond the lands of the elves."

"Perhaps." He shot a brass-toothed grin at her. "I do not pretend to be an expert on summoning."

"No. Of course not." Louise sniffed. "I'm the one who summoned you, of course. But," she said, a little more forcefully, "what are you? You don't look like anything I've ever seen before, and I looked through a lot of the summoning books, for previous familiars."

"Ah?" Two hairless brows rose. "That is unusual... ah, but of course. I suppose that your people are repressive. They keep you down, force you to comply to terrible expectations, that no... human, especially one as fair... no, beautiful... as yourself should have to follow." He shook his head, the long gold ear-rings jingling like bells. That was something that Louise had noticed; the man... woman... thing, on what fabric it had, was covered in small, noise-making things. It couldn't move without jingling. "Well that does not matter."

Straightening up, he fell down into a position of supplication.

"Respected one, I am of the neomah, who descend from the Weaver of Voices, the Indulgent Soul of the great Ligier, _fetich_ of the King, Malfeas! We are the crafters of flesh, the artisans of new life, and," he shot a gaze up at her, and she blushed, "we are the bringers of pleasure. For six hundred years I have lived, since I was crafted myself, and I have ventured unto Creation many times. I have served many of the children of the Dragons, and been the... familiar spirit of Cynis Saliza herself! I have gained rank, for the priests of Cecelyne judged me to be worthy of the rank of citizen, and I am _very_ good at what I do, fair lady."

"I...see," said Louise, who didn't. She knew that it was possible to get intelligent familiars, of course, but ones this... this human, yet obviously not so, and so _flirty_ and _attractive_ and... she hastily reached for her drink, only to find it on the floor.

"You bought me here, my lady," the pink-skinned man continued, "called me. And so I am filled with desire to help you, to aid you. I was called before the Endless Desert herself, the Lawgiver, and so was honoured to be sent out to find a worthy! Because," and he straightened up, to stand, and softly pad on bare feet over to her, running one gentle hand across her jawline. Louise just stared at him, much like a mouse before an oncoming tiger. "Because, I can help you so much, fair lady. I have met others like you. I have seen you, followed you, since you called. There have been others like you, others who despite their bloodlines and their education, do not, and cannot live up to the expectations that their families place on them, through no fault of their own."

"There... are others like me... in the east?" Louise said, slowly.

"Yes, in even the highest houses of House Cynis there are those who lack the gifts of their bloodlines." He sighed, languidly. "It is such a waste," he added, running one hand along her one, smaller, and less pink one. Now that she looked closer, she could see what was wrong with it; there were too many joints in the too-long fingers, and the nails were brass, just like his teeth.

"Stop it," she protested, and he immediately backed away, to kneel again. Louise began to feel more confident. Even without the familiar bond, it seemed that she had some control. Pushing her chair back, she stood, to look down on the figure. "Listen to me," she said. "You say that I summoned you?"

"You called me, yes. I was drawn here, by the burden of duty that I bear."

"And you have served as a familiar before? What happened to your previous masters?"

The man paused. "Ah. There have been many. Often, I have only been called for one night, or for a short time, to aid in the crafting of a child, and so I was dismissed at the end of the summoning. But my longest mistress, who I was... familiar with for one hundred and thirteen years, and who gave me the name Marisalon, she died when putting down a rebellion in the Scavenger Lands. Then the servants of the stars whirled me away, back to the great city in which I was made, to ply my trade ones more. I miss her, in truth, for she was," and the face and body shifted, becoming more feminine, as did the voice, "very fond of me."

The pink haired girl flinched slightly. "So..." she swallowed, "you have never murdered," she forced the word out, "any of your masters?" Part of her hated herself for saying that, was terrified that it might be offended and leave. But there were always tales, ones which Mother had told off Eléonore for telling her, of foolish, non-noble magicians calling up ungodly familiars, which then turned on them.

The now-female thing looked shocked. "Of course not," she said, sounding shocked. "I... I am of the neomah. We cannot break our binding, and nor will we, of our free will, engage in business which would lead to the death of one of the participants. That is not our way." It cleared its throat, bouncing slightly. "But, fair lady," she said, again, "listen to me. Accept me, and we will become closer than lovers," she rolled the last syllable, "closer than even a Sesseljae to that which is cleanses. I will give you power, fair lady. I watched, unseen, while I was too weak, while they tormented you. I watched them as they mocked you. And yet you can be strong. You know that, do you not? With me, they will never call you 'zero' again. All you have to do is make Creation right again, restore the ancient order. And that is not a wrong thing to do, is it? It is good."

The archaic formalism of the creature... of the neomah's speech called to her. "Yes," Louise said, jutting out her jaw. "And... you _want_ to be my familiar?"

"That and more, fair lady," the neomah said, the two dark eyes staring up at her.

Louise stared down, eyes narrow. "Then, yes. Just wait for a moment," she said, fumbling in a pocket for her wand, "and I can complete the contr..."

Her sentence was cut off, as the neomah leapt to its feet, in one flowing motion, and locked her plump lips onto hers, wrapping her arms tight around the girl. Any attempt at protest was muffled, as Louise found herself pressed up against the creatures scantily clad, and very warm, body, a sweet-tasting tongue forced between her lips.

And then the neomah came apart, its pink purple flesh suddenly no longer solid, and like a viscous fog, it solidified around the girl. Solidified into a cocoon, a chrysalis which resembled a nautilus shell, and seemed to be made of brass and fire.

The light in the room went out.

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	3. 2: Once There Was A Maiden

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 2: Once There Was A Maiden**

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Rage. So much rage, at the endless, uncalled for, impossible betrayal! It could not be! Nothing else could ever matter! Rage at the betrayal, rage at their own weakness, rage at their failure as a ruler and their inability to fulfil their duties to their lesser. And shame. So much shame. They could only lose themselves in dance, and that too was shameful, for they did not deserve to lose themselves._

_A hand, slammed into an impermeable wall, over and over and over again, shatters, and there is a scream from the pain, but, nevertheless, the blows continue._

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The spring morning was chillier than yesterday, the last claws of winter still hanging on, and there was a hint of frost on the ground. Headmaster Osmond sighed, turning around from the window, to face his secretary. Not to face her face, notably. No, his attention was somewhat lower.

Miss Longueville cleared her throat. And, then, when a subtle hint had no effect, raised the papers in front of her to obstruct his view. "Headmaster," she said, voice calm, "if you don't mind? Your appointments, for today."

"Of course, of course." The man continued standing, trying to peer down her top, despite the fact that she was dressed _properly_. She knew the headmaster.

"Would you like to sit down, sir?" she suggested.

"Of course, of course, but, you see, I am but an old man, and my physician said that I should 'be sure to make sure that you get some exercise'," the headmaster said, his voice suddenly rather more querulous than before. "Hence, it is good for me to stay standing, at least for a little bit."

"He said no such thing," Miss Longueville said. "In fact, he... where are the notes..." she opened a drawer, "...ah yes," she peered down, "... that is not mentioned anywhere on these. And there is a recommendation that you not be allowed to overexert yourself."

"Ah, I see," Osmond said, leaning forwards slightly. "But I am the headmaster of this school, and so it is my choice whether I stand on the school's floor, or sit on its chairs. In fact, I spend so much of my time sitting that, in the interests of fairness and balance, I should... sit down." Making his way back, he collapsed into his chair.

The secretary looked up, squinting slightly in confusion at the sudden compliance, and so utterly missed the small mouse that ran out from under her desk. "If we are quite done?" the woman said.

"Oh yes. I am satisfied," remarked the wizened man, leaning back. The mouse hopped up onto his desk, and he stroked it, gently running his finger along its back.

Papers were shuffled. "Well, yes. In that case, you first have a meeting at half past nine, to interview a new candidate for the vacant astronomy position. A... a Miss Emmanuelle Leterme. Gallian, studied at _École supérieure d'optique_, in Versailles and later in Greenwich, up in Albion. Line-category wind mage, as is expected for an astronomer, and..." the woman sighed, "... unmarried. Although she is engaged to the Duke of Bedford, who... it notes, is rich, unattractive, and fascinated by astronomy." Eyes were rolled at that.

Osborn stroked his beard. "She was an excellent find," he remarked. "She had a well-rounded... personality... that I felt, the first time we met." His eyes unfocussed, just a little bit. "Very well rounded."

"However, at ten, headmaster, you have an urgent meeting with all the second year teachers. A student failed to summon any familiar."

"Oh." Headmaster Osmond sat up, eyes alert, and even narrowed slightly. "This is unusual." There was apprehension in his voice, as he stretched out his fingers, old joints crackling slightly. "Name?"

"Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière."

"A Vallière?" The man sucked in a breath. "Karin's youngest?"

The secretary flicked an eye down to the genealogy in the files. "Yes. Karin of the Hea..."

"Yes." The man was suddenly a lot less jovially eccentric, and suddenly, subtly, much more predator-like. "Ten, you said? Have it in my office."

"It is set for your office."

"Good." The man softened again, sucking in on his pipe, thinking deep, profound thoughts, of the very secrets of the cosmos and of the nature of faith. "Say, Miss Longueville," he remarked. "White does not suit you. You should wear... yes, green. You have such lovely hair."

The twinkle in his eyes was positively indecent.

The woman looked up, her expression puzzled. "I... am not wearing white?"

There was merely a smile back, followed by a gasp and a sudden crossing of legs, as the ancient mage's intent was divined.

* * *

{0}

_

* * *

A vast city lies beneath a green sun. Brass and basalt form vast spires and towers, beyond anything she has ever, ever seen before. She stands on the top of the tallest tower around, looks out over the city, and she realises that this building alone could house the entire population of the capital. The __streets swarm with life, swarm with figures which are like ants to her, and their music drifts up; foreign to her tastes, but so wonderful that she can feel her eyes welling up with tears. One horizon might be called a forest, but it is a forest of silver, shining in the viridian light, and the trees match the heights of some of the buildings. There are lesser plants, too, even in this urban place, creeping growths of tin and gold and silver and every precious metal grow across hexagonal basalt domes and up helical towers of brass, their leaves spreading wide to catch the rays that shine down upon them._

_It is beautiful to her, alien, yes, but simply beautiful. She looks up at the blackness above, and sees lesser stars twinkling above, and an almost organic-looking red moon, but all the light above is nothing compared to the green sun._

_And it beats. It pulses, almost unnoticeably, and shifts, the landscape shifting to flares of the sun._

_And she realises how much __**pain**__ it must be in._

* * *

{0}

* * *

The conference on the future of Miss Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière among the teaching staff was mixed. There were very clear lines of delineation, too; the ones who felt that 'her continued presence here is perhaps not the best for the girl' correlated remarkably well with the ones who had suffered explosions in their classrooms, while the more theoretical teachers, and the ones who taught non-magic related subjects, felt that her marks were good enough that she could stay with her class, and be permitted to attempt another summoning next year.

"Let's face it, she's useless!" a red-faced woman exclaimed. "She can't even cast the most basic Wind spells, and above that, she is _rather_ unpleasant.

"She has some form of power," a man counter-attacked. "Yes, I know you're bitter about what happened to the fish-pond, but," he chuckled, "... well, it's not like _commoners_ have the capacity to make explosions like that, is it?"

"The one I saw was a pretty one," the elderly man exclaimed, querulously, his head snapping upright from where he had obviously been dozing. "It was all multi-coloured." Osmond blinked. "She stays!" he declared.

"But..." the woman protested.

"Excuse me! Who's the headmaster here? It's me, isn't it? Isn't it?" he asked.

"Indeed you are, Headmaster," Miss Longueville said, efficiently, which earned her a few glares, from the teaching staff who did not appreciate the proximity of the headmaster's eyecandy.

"Exactly! And so my word is... my word! To be followed."

That bought an end to the meeting relatively rapidly.

"Well done, sir," his secretary said, once everyone had left. "You handled that rapidly, and responsible. You are a wonderful headmaster." Some might have detected a slightly patronising tone in her voice.

"Yes." He leant back, and puffed on his pipe. "I think I did."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Colbert rapped at the door. "Excuse me?" he said. "Miss... um, Louise? We need to talk about your future, and..." he trailed off, as no response came, and he noticed that there were two students approaching down the corridor. This was not the place for a discussion of someone's future.

"Excuse me?" he asked the students. "Have you seen Miss Vallière?"

The dark-skinned, Germanian redhead tilted her head slightly, and shrugged. "Nope. Didn't see Louise at breakfast," she answered. "Not surprised, really. The whole bird-kissing thing must have been humiliating."

"Yes," added her companion, not looking up from her book.

"But she did have a really large plate of food when I saw her last night," Kirche added, helpfully. "I think she's just planning to lock herself in her room for the next few days or something." There was perhaps unexpected sympathy in the girl's face. "I wouldn't wish a failed summoning on _anyone_. Even Louise. I mean, yes, I know that not everyone can be as wonderful as me, and get a flame salamander, or a..."

"Dragon."

"Yes, a dragon, but, nothing at all?" There was a pause. " Ouch."

* * *

{0}

_

* * *

The woman beside her burns with light, like the setting sun through flawless ice. The pale-skinned red-head gestures, and the transparent knife she throws splits, sparkling in the light as the shatterglass spread slices through the archons before her. The deva scream as the light of holy judgement burns through them, and their souls are devoured in the conflagration, dead and gone forever. A single glance back shows the squadron behind her, serried ranks of jade armour and weaponry within the fury of the elements that whips around them, and perfectly disciplined, they march through the ranks of their foe, burning and poisoning and cutting and destroying, utterly._

_She burns too, terrible sun-bright radiance leaching all colour from the world. She raises her blade, and, one roared work cutting through the noise of battle, orders the charge._

And it is horrible. Wrong, wrong, wrong, a terrible blasphemy against all that should be.

_These deva were only the beginning. Gold-Shattered Arrow had already cut through their patrons, and their ultimate foe was weak, depleted from the effort to respawning all the third-circle archons that he had led the children of Mela against. He was weak, vulnerable, and they had bought so many forces, that covered from horizon to horizon. Dragonblooded and Dragon-kings and the People of Adamant and seven score Chosen of both the Sun and Moon marched together, anima banners illuminating the world with an intensity which matched the Daystar._

_The Primordial fills the other horizon._

_She still charges._

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Miss Vallière?" The porter banged on the door, the heavy clunking resounding down the hallway. "Miss Vallière! Your presence is... um... requested!" There was a pause. "Nothin', sir," the porter reported to Colbert, perhaps unnecessarily.

"I see." The man ran a hand over his bald head. "And no one's seen her since?" he said, picking up the note on the door, and squinting at it again. He had read it the first time, waited a day, and had come back. She hadn't been at dinner last night, or breakfast today. There hadn't been any classes, because the second years were being introduced to their new familiars, and so he hadn't expected to see her there, but the lack of food, or... or any sign of her existence was getting worrying.

He had been supervising the class. He had given her extra help out of lessons, when she had asked. He was partially responsible.

"Some time night before last, sir. I _asked_ people," the porter added, proudly. "Investigatin' and stuff. The kitchen haven't seen her or nothin'."

"Well," the teacher said, after a moment's thought. "Wait here, while I go find a female teacher, who can be present. In fact... no. Yes. If I can find Chevreuse of the Red Clay, she can both remove the hinges from the walls, and also provide the needed chaperonage for being present in a female student's bedroom. "

* * *

{0}

* * *

"_Zero! Zero! Zero! You're just nothing, worthless, worthless, useless, useless!"_

_The figures surround her, dancing mocking her._

_And then they evaporate, the skeletons lit for a moment in green fire before they too cease to be._

**We will give you strength. We will give you worth. They will be nothing compared to you.**

**We will give you rewards, wealth, pleasure, and above all, We will give you respect. They will never inflict indignities on you nor Us when all is as it should be again.**

**Just free us and reclaim the world!**

* * *

{0}

* * *

A careful flick of the wand, and an accompanying incantation, and the stone flowed like wax away from the hinges, leaving the door freestanding, to be carefully lowered down by the porters.

Professor Colbert, wand in hand, winced slightly. Old instincts were screaming at him, that they were horribly exposed by this doorframe, and if there was a hostile mage inside the room, the porters, all commoners, were possibly dead. He suppressed them. That wasn't him anymore, and they were not needed. This was just a student's room, after all; a student who had just failed to summon anything, and who hadn't, perhaps understandably, been seen since, because she'd locked herself in her room, and, if reports were correct, had taken a large plate of food in with her. No wonder she wanted to avoid the other students. They were getting to avoid lessons, to familiarise themselves with their new familiars, and to face them, and face her own failure, would have been nearly impossible.

And, on sound compassionate grounds, it was a bad idea to leave her alone in here, when she both needed to discuss her future properly, and, more tactfully, needed to be prevented from maybe doing something... _silly_. And terminal.

However, he still stepped through the door with wand raised, knees in their familiar half-crouch, ready to throw himself to the side to allow his supporting unit, which he didn't have, to lob spells through without him blocking their line of sight. Old habits died hard.

And the first thing that drew his attention was the giant brass shell-thing, covered in runes lit in green fire. No. They weren't _lit_, he realised, the fire mage applying instincts which had developed over all his years of magic. They were fire; roiling, liquid, green fire that was the main source of illumination in the room and which spilled forth to burn out on the stone floor.

"What in God's name is that?" Professor Chevreuse gasped, from somewhere behind him.

Colbert ignored her, and kept his wand trained on the object. "Miss Vallière!" he called out, not looking anywhere else. "Miss Vallière!"

There was no response, from anywhere else in the room.

"Could it be some kind of familiar?" the female teacher asked, poking her head from around the golem of stone which she had made from the floor. "It has runes on it."

"Maybe." The bald man stepped sideways, pacing around the shell-like thing. "That isn't fire. At least not properly," he stated, the persona of the eccentric teacher cast aside in favour of the Flame Snake. "Fire doesn't act like that." He barked a sudden incantation that left the other people watching flinching, and, hand suddenly wreathed in orange flames, the light so much more healthy than the sick green glow, he reached out to touch the shell.

He held the hand there for several seconds, a perplexed look forming on his face.

"Interesting," Colbert said, simply. "That _should_ have melted it. It looks like bronze. It isn't." He cracked his neck, and retracted his hand, shaking it and dispersing the orange fire. "So we have something made of bronze and green fire, which is not made of real bronze or real fire. And no sign of Miss Vallière. I want a secure peri..." he blinked, and remembered himself. "That is to say, there should probably be a conference of as many of the teaching staff so we can try to work out what it is, yes?"

Professor Chevreuse blinked at him, still behind her crude golem. "Yes... yes," she said, looking at her colleague with a new eye.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"_Who are you!" she screams, leaping up, running along the mountain-jouten, a constant refrain. Her blade is gone, sacrificed in the ploy, but it worked! The others are left behind, holding off the force of the Archon Samaneth, who draws upon her Progenitor and is mighty because of it, but she has broken through to the jouten! It pelted her with rock and pain and the authority born of its nature, but it could not strike her. She screams at it, attacks its identity, and it cannot fight her, for while it is uncertain, it is weak._

_And one fist-blow breaks through the Mountain, to the Beast Under the Mountain, and it is her foe and she is ready._

_It is not an eternal testament to its own existence. It relies on others_

_Her hands fasten around the neck of the titanic being, and she fastens on, squeezing tight and tighter, with force that can split rocks and shatter mountains and she feels the jouten buck and fight under her, but it cannot break free, and it is weak, so weak, and the uncertainty that she forces upon it is imperfect, uncentred._

_"Who are you! Tell me who you are!" she roars, as it tries to break free, but cannot, and as its lifeblood of motonic essence flows away, it panics. "What are you without servants, without your thralls! Creation does not remember your name! Who are you! Where are you! What are you! Tell me!"_

_And then._

_A simple snap._

In her head, Louise screams at the cold-blooded murder she's being forced to watch, being forced to participate in, and she recoils. And it's always there, the knowledge that what had just been **murdered** had been one of the creators of the universe, a being that made _gods_, and it had been **murdered** by rebellious, **treacherous** humans outfitted as pawns by **treacherous** beings that hated the natural order of Creation.

_And blazing like the dawn, she kills it utterly, the rush as it rushes into her, and something screams in her skull about how wrong this is, now that this impossible deed has been done and its in her __mind and in her soul and it hurts, an agonised moment of infinity reaching out forever, and..._

_... and then it is nothing more than a corpse._

_"Who are you? You're nothing," she says to the corpse of Mardukth._

* * *

{0}

* * *

"So... there's a giant conch-shell of brass and green fire in Miss Vallière's room?"

"Yes," Colbert said, wincing. Only these two men were in his office; his secretary had been sent to check some important documents in the library.

"And there's no sign of her?"

"Yes. No. There isn't a sign of her."

"And the...the thing is large enough to possibly fit a human in?"

"... maybe."

"But... you've had teachers test it with all the elements, and they can't even scratch it?"

"No. Nothing. Even I couldn't touch it."

Osmond sat back. "Could it be her familiar?"

"That's something which I've considered," Colbert admitted. "I'm not entirely sure what a giant brass-and-fire snail would be good for, but... well, it's possible."

"I've sent the porters out to _discreetly_ check the nearby villages," the headmaster stated. "She's distinctive looking, and they should be able to find her if she did run away, or at least follow the trail left by a pink-haired noble."

There was a pause.

"Do... do you want to get Karin involved?" the fire mage asked, hesitantly.

"Do you want to have to explain to the Heavy Wind that we've lost her youngest daughter after she failed to summon a familiar?"

"... your point is taken." The teacher shrugged. "I'm working on the runes on the shell," he admitted, "and I've suggested to the other teachers that we should always have someone keeping an eye on it. For one, it is burning with green fire. Which is not proper fire."

"Sensible." Osmond narrowed his eyes. "Have two there. At all times. Cut back on the second year lessons, tell them they're getting to know their familiars. We don't want the Vallières angry at us, but we also don't want some kind of giant snail of brass and fire eating the school."

"You suspect something." It was not a question.

"I have a bad feeling about this," the old man confirmed. "I haven't felt like this in... years."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Days passed, and nothing changed.

All attempts by other students to find out what was happening were brushed aside, with a certain disdain which didn't seem to respect that they were nobles _at all_.

No sign of Louise. No change in the thing in her quarters. The vigil was maintained, and the search continued.

* * *

{0}

**

* * *

See all this monstrosity** _the voice says to her, proud and mighty, a king among gods and more than that._ **See! Watch! See all that was put wrong. See that the gods are in Our heaven and all is wrong with Creation! See the depravities inflicted on Us! We are like you, we have been wronged, and wronged mightily! You will free Us! You will obey, and you will make the world as it shall be!**

_The unfelt presence of brass and fire feels safe to Louise, feels... like her mother, strong and something to admire. Something that she should try to be like, and above that, something that she can be like._

**We have given you power. We have given you instructions. You will make Creation as it should be, and We can have Our revenge, and you can have yours.**

**So go. Go in Our name. Go, and be Our Left Hand and take up Our Blade and don Our Crown.**

**And free Us!**

* * *

{0}

* * *

Carefully balancing her tray, a maid manoeuvred her way up the stairs to where the second year students had their rooms. It was unusually quiet up here, Siesta thought, her shoes clicking against the stone flooring. Maybe the other students had got bored at staring at the curtained off door, and the constant presence of at least one teacher there, who point-blank refused to let anyone through, no matter how nicely they asked. They had even temporarily blocked off the windows, Earth mages warping the walls until they were just a smooth surface, to stop pupils from flying to peek in from the outside. It was certainly clear which room the... thing had happened in, because there were velvet ropes sealing it off.

Humming an old folk tune her mother had taught her, she stepped around the rather formal barricade, and knocked at the door, waiting to actually be told to come in.

"Who is it?" a teacher called from within.

"I... I was told to bring food up for the teachers here, who missed dinner," Siesta said, trying to keep her voice under control. "I'm... I'm from the serving staff."

The door was pulled open a crack, a suspicious eye glaring through, before the teacher relaxed, and opened the door wider. "Don't worry," Professor Martin called back. "It's actually a maid this time. And..." her eyes flicked down, to the covered platters in the girl's hands, "... she has _food_."

"Actually a maid?" Siesta ventured, eyes widening slightly as she realised what she'd said. She wasn't meant to draw attention to herself.

The teacher, a plump middle-aged woman, didn't seem to mind or feel like taking offence. "Oh, some of the students have been trying to get inside to look at this," she said, pointing at the... Siesta boggled slightly, and tried to cover the fact that she was staring. Professor Martin was pointing at a man-sized brass shell, odd shapes in green fire running across the surface. "Um. You didn't see that," she added, hastily.

"See what, ma'am?" the maid asked.

"That giant weird brass and fire th... oh, right. I see. Yes, good girl."

"Where do you wish," Siesta lifted the platter slightly, "this to be put?"

"Oh, on the table by the shell-thing. What is it?"

"I was instructed to bring you a selection from what was served for dinner. This includes meats..."

"What kind of meat?" the bald man sitting in the armchair asked.

"Uh... I believe there is partridge, quail, goose and pork, cooked with a variety of dressings, and..."

"What kind of dressings?"

"Oh, in Founder's name, Pierre, just let her put down the food and we can eat," Professor Martin snapped at her colleague. "She bought wine, too," she added, with a smile. "I'll have to thank the..."

There was a snapping noise, loud, and somehow both akin to shattering glass and a breaking bone.

"What was that?"

The conch-like protrusion suddenly glowed with an inner radiance, which shone its sick light over the entire room. In the sudden viridescence, everything seemed wan, faint, far less real than the terrible, blinding cracks that spread across the brass. Each time the light spread, the noise sounded again, and the male teacher flinched, hands jerking up to cover his ears. The heat was pouring off the chrysalis, and some paper notes on the table by it ignited, their orange, smoky flames bleeding to green as the light shone on them.

The breaking became a cacophony, a syllabic shattering, which was punctured by the sound of metal on stone, as the outer layer fell apart, to reveal the inner core of green fire. An inner core which burned around the solitary, naked figure of a teenage girl, who, eyes wide open, pupils dilated, broke her way out of the shell of brass, the previously impervious metal shattering like poorly baked clay to her slightly pressure.

And then the green fire died away, and it was merely a naked, dazed-looking Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière who stood before them, eyes blinking in the light.

In the silence afterwards, the smash and clatter of the dropped food was exceptionally loud, as, gasping for breath, Siesta pointed with a trembling hand at the burning symbol in the centre of the girl's forehead. Even as she did so, it vanished, all too quickly. The maid's lips twitched, stammering, wobbling, as she tried to form a word.

Louise licked her lips. "What... what are you doing in my room?" she asked, a slight note of outrage present. The offence vanished as she squeaked, hands going to cover herself, as she realised that she was naked in front of not one, but two teachers, and one of the help.

Then the shouting started.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Slowly, carefully, Professor Colbert turned the page of the ancient book, his gloved hand careful around the tweezers. This book was ancient, in the restricted section of the teacher's library, and even then he had needed to get the headmaster's express permission to remove it from its protected case. It was not that it was exceptionally rare, though it was; it was simply that it was of such age, that he could not even touch it without it being damaged. It was old enough that the Earth spells on it, to maintain its physical integrity, were failing, and no-one had got around to repairing them yet.

And he was beginning to suspect that the original text was even older. The text... he could see a vague, distant relationship to the runes normally displayed by familiars, but if they were runes, these were pictograms, ideograms, an altogether more primitive form of script. But, luckily, and then again, not so luckily, someone had gone through this ancient, priceless book, perhaps when it was being written, and added a transcription in the ancestor-script of the modern runes, the crude ink vandalising the original. With a second reference source, to shift from those runes into a modern language, he was making slow, agonising progress on the work.

The man sighed, and wiped his brow on his sleeve. He knew all about the flaws of transcription through a second language. But, hopefully, it was functional, because, at the very least, his own translation of the symbols seemed to make sense.

Well, mostly. The floor was littered with crossings out, and discarded attempts. He made a note on his reference pad, and looked back at the current version.

_The Scripture of the One-Handed Maiden_

_Once there was a maiden...  
... who struck an iron wall until it shattered her hand.  
She did not stop, though cracks spread throughout her bones.  
She did not stop, though blood sprayed her eyes.  
She did not stop until she shattered the wall._

Fingers feeling numb, Colbert wrote the last line, his pen strokes slow, and somewhat shaky.

"_Survival is Fury," she said._

* * *

{0}


	4. 3: A Bad Letter Day

**A Green Sun Illuminates The Void**

**Chapter 3: A Bad Letter Day**

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was dawn, and the pink-haired girl was already awake. Clad only in her nightgown, she paced up and down in her room, her bare feet slapping against cold stone and soft rugs equally. They had fixed the door, but it wasn't quite in place properly, and there was a chill draft blowing in underneath. Her feet should have been cold.

They weren't.

Halting, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière stared at herself in the mirror again, the soft glow of a magical lamp enough to illuminate the room. Two eyes stared back at her, from a pale face surrounded by long pink hair. The resemblance to her older sister, Cattleya, and to her mother was immediately clear, although her eyes narrowed slightly, before softening, at the thought of the differences between them. The previous differences, that was. Not these new ones.

Her pupils were slightly larger, and were her eyes, she was sure of it, larger and a touch darker. And, likewise, her face was slightly more symmetrical, although Louise had to admit that it was possible that she was imagining that bit. The scars, like the one on her knee where she had fallen over on gravel when she was six, were gone, but... they might have just faded with time, right? But there were things that she wasn't, couldn't be imagining.

She glared down at her hands, glaring at the brass that had replaced her finger nails. Raising one to her mouth, the distinctive taste of flesh-warm metal was clear. She had broken her nail scissors trying to cut them, and had resorted to trying to file them down with her nail file. The brass shavings on her desk were a legacy of that attempt, along with a splash of blood. The file had been utterly inappropriate for these purposes, and when she had slipped, the edge had scraped away flesh all down the side of her finger.

That had healed up far faster than it should have, too. There was no trace of it any more, apart from the blood on the desk and the spine of a book she had touched accidentally. Still, even that might have been the product of some kind of magical mishap. She had blown things up before, far too many times, creating explosions when she had been trying to control water, or levitate. It made sense that she might have accidentally transmuted her fingernails to brass, when she was trying to summon things. At least by her standards.

No, what made it clear that it had actually happened, was...

"_Hmm. I like this mirror. Just the right size, and the frame is tastefully understated. Although, I have to admit, it's disconcerting..._" and there was a mental shudder, "_... how quiet it is in this place. I mean, I know _intellectually _that you need not fear the Silent Wind, but old habits are hard to break. Anyway, how about breakfast? You're getting hungry._"

... was the voice in her head.

"_No, wait a moment. Turn sideways a bit. In the mirror._"

'Why?' Louise thought to herself.

"_I want to see what you're like_," the voice of the neomah said, a certain desultory note in her... its voice. "_What changes have occurred?_"

Louise grudgingly acquiesced.

"_You know, you're really rather attractive,_" Marisalon stated. "_Yes... my. I wouldn't have minded using flesh from you in one of my children. You could have done __**whatever**__ you wanted to me. I mean, yes, it's a shame about the lack of a bust..._"

"Shut up!" Louise hissed, out loud, blushing furiously.

"_What? It isn't as if many beings don't prefer a certain tastefulness in the chest area, and you, my lady, are very tasteful. Hmm... tasteful. Lick your left wrist, please._"

"No! I'm not going to do that!" Louise said, getting even redder. She coughed. "And what do you mean, changes?"

There was a sigh. "_I'm in your head. I can see that you're preening yourself, admiring the changes which the exaltation has wrought on you._" Louise shivered, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. "_And... well, although you're still rather short... and rather tastefully sized in the chest region..._"

"Argh! Shut up shut up shut up!" Spinning around, she grabbed the pillow off her bed, and headbutted it, clasping it over her face. Sadly, this didn't actually do anything to actually silence the voice.

"_I don't see what you're getting into a fuss about. I love the wonderful forms of flesh, in all its variety and shapes. And your appearance nicely complements the more adolescent features of your physique._"

There was quiet. Then;

"Listen to me," Louise hissed at her reflection. "We are going to lay down some ground rules here." She ground her teeth. "One. No comments about my height. Two. No comments about my... my chest. Three. I don't look like a little girl. Four. You shut up when I tell you to." She took a deep breath. "Five. Um. Nails. How do you cut them?"

"_Huh?_"

"Well," Louise licked her lips, "they're made of brass. Are... are they going to grow back normal, or..."

"_You mean that brass isn't normal?_" the voice asked, curiously.

"No! Not for humans!"

"_Oh yeah. Huh. Well, it depends a lot on what you want, and the end finish. I mean, for mundane activities, I always prefer a thin lacquer of therion to, which removes the end, and then careful __honing with an obsidian razor, but that's just the day to day finish. When I am engaged with another citizen, it is of course necessary to take more care. I myself swear by the use of aumnovores, because their saliva means that the nails hold a near-perfect edge, and also give them a wonderful, crystal-like gleam, but I know that's a minority opinion. Another..._"

Louise tuned out the voice, as it babbled about... things. Things that, to her ears, sound more like alchemy than nail-clipping. She stared down at the offending transmuted nails, and their matching friends on her feet. This had the potential to be problematic, she thought, tapping her lips with her index finger.

She yelped.

"_... of course, the blood of a... watch out, they're sharp. Now, where was I?_"

The girl wiped her lip against her hand, and ran her tongue over the gash... which was no longer there, having already sealed up. 'That's enough,' she thought. 'I'll need to go into the capital, and see what we... I can get.' She stared back at herself in the mirror. 'I have one question,' she thought, raising two hands to her chest. 'Why... well, my fingernails changed. And there's something a bit... odd about my eyes. But... um... er... that is to say, why didn't _these_ grow at all?"

"_Beats me!_" the neomah said, cheerfully. "_When we journey back to The City, you can get an explanation from the Unquestionables themselves. You'll be a peer there, you know, above mere serfs and even citizens, like I was, above even my progenitor._"

"Journey?" Louise blurted out. "I... I can't do that! I have school, you know. And..." she paused. They had told her, yesterday, that she was being permitted to stay, but had anything really changed?

Well, yes, a lot had changed. She _had_ summoned something. It wasn't her fault that it had melted into her. She wasn't just a failure.

And she now _knew_ things. In those dreams, those odd nightmare-fantasies of strength and brass and green fire, and that sense of beauty, of wonder, and of justice unfairly maligned that came with it, she had learned things. That voice, that... she blushed, faintly... that strong, commanding, attractive voice, that radiated the same respect, the same authority, the same pillar of unyielding strength as Mother, had told her things, told her of what she could do.

Yes.

She picked up a piece of paper from her desk, and, holding it in front of her, Louise quite deliberately tore it in two.

"Green Sun Nimbus Flare," she said, a smirk on her face.

The green gouts of flame that radiated down the tear, engulfing the entire piece of paper, and leaving only ash to fall down between her fingers, were enough to satisfy her. And from the other small piles of ashes there were on the floor, this was not for the first time that she was so satisfied.

"So, you see," she said, out loud. "I'm not going to go anywhere. I'm not going to run away. I am going to stay here, and learn magic properly, and I am going to _show them all_ that I am not the Zero. Understand me?"

"_But of course, my lady. You are a peer of the City, chosen of the King himself. Such thing is your __right,_" the neomah said, its tone slightly different... maybe even a little fearful. "_But you must make your entry to the City, for your victor's parade, to take up your lands and your seat at the Althing._"

"And I will do that. In time. But for now..."

"_Of course, my lady, of course. But I merely say... someone is about to knock._"

"Really?"

There was a knock at the door.

"_Really._"

"Oh, Zero! Hey, there. None of us have seen you for a few days, and then there was all that fuss with the teachers outside your door, and... well, after the summoning, we wondered... well, I heard you talking... is there anyone in here? Have you actually managed to find a man who'll put up with your... inadequacies?"

Louise stared at the dark-skinned, Germanian redhead, contempt on her face. She had a scathing retort ready, oh yes she did, something that would utterly put that girl down, and humiliate the old rival of her family. This was going to be good, she thought, looking the girl up and down.

"_Well, __**hello**__ there!_"

She lost her train of thought almost immediately. 'Shut up!' she mentally ordered.

"_My lady, I would direct your attention to the many fine attributes which this exquisite young lady possesses. Look at the curve of her arm, that sleek, rounded, elegant ratio of musculature to flesh. Look at those lips, perfectly formed, and..._" the neomah made a... well, there was no other way of putting it, _orgasmic_ noise, "_... eminently kissable. And as for that figure, those hips curving in to a waste before..._"

"Shut up!"

Kirche stared at her, and Louise realised that she'd said that out loud. "I only asked if you were all right," she said, a slightly offended note in her voice. "But, of course, it would be _far_ too much to accept manners from a de la Vallière, wouldn't it?" She turned on her heels, and strode off.

"_Mmm... look at that behind, those sleek curves like the very apples of desire, rounded..._"

'Shut up shut up shut up shut up!'

* * *

{0}

* * *

Upon first examination, Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière appeared to be perfectly normal at breakfast. She sat down normally, said her prayer to the Founder normally, and resolutely ignored everyone who tried to talk to her about the fact that she had been absent for five days, and still appeared to lack a familiar... normally.

It was upon second examination when the oddities emerged. Like the fact that she looked subtly different. Or the fact that she had apparently painted her nails a bronze colour. Or the slightly distracted, occasionally bemused expression on her face. Or the way that she ate as if starved, but only took a little bit from every dish. Or the way that she switched, and occasionally blushed if she looked at certain of her classmates.

It was probably nothing.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"There is certainly something up with the Zero," Guiche de Gramont said, a flippant smile somewhat plastered on his face, as he loaded up his plate. The second years, seated on the middle table, were abuzz with casual chatter and the sounds of eating. With an overly showy flip of a hand, he acquired a cluster of grapes, grown in the water-mage aided greenhouses of the school, and delicately placed them on top of the mound of fruit which seemed to compose his breakfast.

"So you _are_ staring at her," his girlfriend remarked, accusingly.

"Monmon, she disappeared for 5 days after being a failure at the summoning ritual. This is actually curiosity," he said, his tone actually serious, despite his expression. He shrugged. "Moreover, she is simply inadequate compared to your beauty. Surely you could not believe that I could ever, possibly be disloyal to you."

"What I'd like to know is, why is she still here?" Montmorency Margarita la Fère de Montmorency said, folding her arms. "It's not as if there aren't _rules_ about this sort of thing. She shouldn't be here. Send her to Germania; she wouldn't stick out there, or send her to Saint Eloise's, or something, one of the reform schools."

"You know that wouldn't happen, though. She's a de la Vallière."

"But even that family can't stand up to the actual _rules_ in that way." The girl snorted, tweaking the sit of her black mantle with an irritated jerk. "Of course, so much for their vaunted lineage. If even they can produce an inexprimé, then perhaps they're..." she kicked the blond boy under the table, "...hey! Look at me, not some stupid first year!"

"I'm not looking at... hey, you can't catch me out that easil... oww!"

"Aha! You have something to hide, then!

"Would you mind?" the fat boy sitting next to Guiche drawled, as the blond fliched. "You're making the table rock."

"Yeah, you two, cut it out. We wouldn't want Malicorne to miss his meals, would be?" Charles Alexandre de Calonne said, with a shrug, before he frowned, steepling his fingers. "Anyway, use your heads. She can't be an inexprimé, because we're all quite..." he coughed, "... aware of her faculty for blowing things up." He tapped his fingers on the table. "Now, consider something else. Who... or, should I say, _what_ else are destructive, don't have familiars, and don't use magic the normal, proper, righteous way?"

"... dragons?"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise was, at that point, contemplating the virtues of forks, and their possible use as a brain-stabbing tool. She was uncertain if her targets were going to be everyone who was talking about her disappearance and reappearance, or her own brain to shut up its unwelcome passenger, but, Founder damn it, someone was going to get a fork through the eyesocket.

"_Ooh! Ooh! Try some of the grapes next! I love grapes! I don't suppose you have any lacunae here, do you? I can't see any on the table. Have you tried asking the serving staff for some... oh, __**hello**__ there. Fair lady, might I recommend that you add that butler to your harem... oh, wait, I was meant to recommend that you get a harem first, wasn't I? Get a harem._"

The odds were leaning towards 'her own brain'.

'Listen,' she thought furiously. 'If you don't _shut up_ about... about s-sex and stuff, I'm not going to eat.'

There was a mental silence. "_I'll be good,_" Marisalon eventually replied.

'Liar. You're in my head. I can feel when you lie, neomah.'

"_Well, I'll try. If you'll eat some of those grapes, that is._"

Louise gave in. It seemed for the best.

Someone cleared their throat behind her.

"What is it, Kejak?" she said, without thinking, sitting back on her throne, and waiting for yet another tedious report from the Convention of Destiny. Honestly, they did go on. She could probably cut one of their reports in half, with no loss in the actual content.

"Um. Miss Vallière, it's me. Professor Colbert," said the balding man.

"Oh." The girl blinked, once, twice, a hand going to her head. "Urgh."

"Are you feeling all right?" There seemed to be honest, genuine concern in the man's voice.

"_Tell him you're fine, and you just have a headache,_" Marisalon said, any levity gone.

She forced herself to smile. "Just a bit of a headache," she 'admitted'. "I am fine."

"Are you sure? Because, you know, you should go to the infirmary if you feel wrong, at all," Colbert told her. "We're not sure why..." he looked at the other students who weren't even trying that hard to conceal that they were listening in, "... why you were ill, or if there are any long term consequences, and... well, if you feel unusual at all, you shouldn't keep it hidden."

The girl stared up at him, and he suppressed a shudder. He hadn't slept more than a few hours last night, because he had been up late in the restricted areas of the library. Fenrir's library may have been only for the teachers, but there were still holes in it, still gaps. Luckily, the headmaster's secretary had volunteered to aid him, and she had been useful; she had helped him make a proper catalogue of all the books which had traces of the proto-runic script.

Which had been remarkably many. Just traces most of the time, small excerpts from texts which were old when they had been written, or in a number of cases, as notes about a now-unknown language, but sometimes there were more. Texts from the East, books on old architecture... it was fascinating. Colbert was beginning to realise how little he had paid attention to old history when he had been at school himself.

He shook his head, and returned his attention to the girl who had prompted this.

Her eyes _gleamed_ green in the light.

Colbert flinched slightly, and his hand twitched, reaching for his wand. That instinct was suppressed. That was silly. It... it had only been a trick of the light. He hadn't been getting enough sleep, and he had been thinking about the green runes and... yes, there was green glass in the stained glass window behind him, he realised, and... he took a breath.

"Miss Vallière," he began formally, "the Headmaster asked that I pass this letter to you. Open it in private."

"I see." The girl seemed to wince. "Is... um..."

"I would recommend that you _study as hard as you can_ to maintain your academic record," Colbert added, his voice edged.

The pink-haired girl nodded. "I understand," she said, after a momentary pause.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Charles rolled his eyes, flicking his dark hair. "Yes, Malicorne. Louise is actually part-dragon. She might appear to be human, but she carries the blood of giant flying scaly lizards in her veins. Perhaps she is part... part rhyme-dragon. It makes perfect sense. That would, of course, explain her amazing prowess with the element of wind, her ability to fly, and, of course, her..."

"Actually, come to think of it, her mother is Karin of the Heavy Wind..."

"No! There are no such thing as people who are secretly part-dragon! Does not work that way!" the boy hissed, slamming his fist down into the table, and sending a fork pinwheeling through the air. There was a yell from somewhere behind him, and one of the maids collapsed in a pile of plates, a gash on the side of her

Silence held for a moment, as the students turned around to stare at the figure fallen among the shattered plates. Gazes were exchanged. And, as one, they turned back to their food, studiously.

"The point is," Charles said, stumbling on, "... um... where was I? Oh yes. You don't get people who are really dragons. She is..."

There was a tap on his shoulder, and he turned, to see a bespectacled, blue haired girl staring down at him. "Pass," she said, pointing at a pot of pâté.

He did so, and she departed.

"I really don't know what Tabitha's problem is," he remarked, eyes widening slightly as the girl somehow managed to empty the jar with a single scoop of a fork, and then fit it all into her mouth. "But where was I? Louise. She is likewise almost certainly not part-orc, part-ghost, part-spirit, pa..."

"Hey!" Montmorency interjected, eyes narrowed. "We de Montmorencys can trace our lineage back to a pact made between us and the water spirits, when my ancestors took one as a bride!"

"That's just mythology."

"It's true!"

"Yes, _sure_."

"You're pushing it, Charlie," Guiche said, leaning forwards. "I _do_ so hope that you're not insinuating that Monmon is lying. Because that would be an affront to her honour. And such an affront to her is an affront to me, for she is my dearest love," he added, with a sideways glance at the girl. The smile on her face was enough.

"Then, Montmorency, I sincerely apologise," the dark-haired boy said. "But all of this is a diversion, because of an interruption. Several interruptions. Quite a few." He paused, taking a deep breath, looking around. "Could she have... elvish blood?" he asked, in a half-whisper.

Malicorne leant forwards, intently. "No way. Impossible. Her ears, for one," he said, with a sudden air of authority. "And elves aren't built like real people, at all. I mean, yes, they look more human than, say, an orc, but... have you ever seen an elf skeleton? "

There were shaken heads.

"Well, my father has one, in his study. He showed me the difference between it and a human one. It's... weird. It isn't quite like normal bone." He tilted his head. "Of course, the skull was sort of caved in, but even then... the eye sockets were too big. Compared to the human ones I saw."

"Well, there's no reason that someone with some distant elvish blood would have to have the ears," Charles argued. "She could just... just be a throwback, or something."

"This is getting silly," Guiche said. "For one, we're missing breakfast. For two..." he winced, "... do you really want to be the one throwing around allegations that the de Vallierés have elvish blood in them? I know for one that I don't."

"Oh. Yeah. No, that's... not a _good_ thing to be saying."

Attention from thereon in was dedicated to their plates.

* * *

{0}

* * *

'He's powerful,' thought Louise, watching the balding man walk away. She knew it, she could feel it radiating off him, in the heat and fire she had almost tasted, roiling and hissing and bubbling.

"_He's..._" Marisalon's voice trailed away. "_He's not what I thought. I... I could... I was sure that you were children of the devas of the traitor Gaia. Not that I have any personal dislike of them, of course; they have such... inventiveness. It's exquisite, sometimes, such passion, such..._" There was a mental pleasurable shudder. "_But although he is of fire, he is not of Hesiesh. What... what is that man?_"

The neomah actually sounded scared, and Louise's mouth twitched up at the corners. That was good. It was far too... annoying and in-her-head for anything else to be a natural response. 'He's one of my teachers,' she thought back. 'He's... nicer than some of the others.'

"_No, no, no._" She could somehow feel the sensation of a head being shaken, within her own head. "_Some child of an elemental, perhaps?_

'What on earth are you talking about?"

"_Well, he certainly keeps himself in shape,_" the neomah added, but that comment seemed almost reflexive, as if its mind was elsewhere.

"What do you mean by that?" she said, and realised that she'd said that out loud.

"Nothing, Zero," one of the girls said, glaring at her. "I wasn't talking to you. Although," she added, "... come on, tell all. Where have you been for the last week, come on?"

Louise twitched. "It doesn't matter," she blurted out, trying to keep an expression befitting of a Vallière steady. She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin, to cover her mouth, and checked the plate before her. Somehow, she had managed to eat considerably more than she normally would. She frowned at that, which broke her glare, and resolved that she would have to be more careful about bribing Marisalon with food.

"_You know, with humans, weight put on often goes straight to the breasts_," the neomah remarked, hastily, with an utterly transparent attempt at innocuousness. "_And if you don't want to get bigger breasts because you put on weight, you can just eat things like lovely, juicy, succulent grapes, which hardly mean that you'll put on grapes... I mean, weight._"

Louise stood, and tucked her chair in.

"_Come on. At least take something with you back to your room. Pleee~eease!_"

* * *

{0}

* * *

"_No, really, come on! There are grapes and pears and..._"

"If you nag me, you don't get food. And I can hold out without it longer than you," Louise muttered to herself, as she strode down the stone corridors of the school building, back to her room. There was a "getting to know your familiar" lesson next, so it wasn't like she _needed_ to do that, was it?

"_Starvation... you monster!_

* * *

{0}

* * *

Wax cracked, as, sitting at her desk, the pink haired girl broke the seal on the letter, and carefully unfolded it.

She reached the end.

Her expression rigid, Louise stood up, placed the letter down on her desk, and stepped towards the wall.

Then she headbutted the wall as hard as she could. The plaster cracked.

"_Why would you do something like that, fair lady?_"

"Shut." Louise was panting, a wet trickle of hot blood rolling down her forehead. "Up."

"_I am sorry, my lady, but..._"

"No. No. More." She shook her head, and reached up, to wipe at the blood. "I... I just... I..." she let out a shuddering breath. "No. Just... shut it. You... you say you were a... a _courtesan_, yes? And certainly dressed like it. _Why are you so annoying!_"

There was a silence. Then "_Well, I think the answer is obvious_," Marisalon said, its voice sounding slightly hurt. "_It's not as if all of them were interested in talking at all. Although, of course, that's not quite true. Why, my beloved mistress, Cynis Saliza loved to listen to me talk about the affairs of the City, and my services to the denizens of that mighty places. She found my tales inspiring and arousing alike, and it was due to these that she began to experiment with teodozjia and demjen, which she found most plea..._"

There was another smash, as Louise headbutted the wall again, giving the first dent a twin. "Perverted head-thing!" she yelled. "Oh, Founder! Why! Why couldn't I not summon a... a stupid, perverted head... head..."

"_Neomah_."

"Shut. Up. Just... just get out of my head! Go be a proper familiar for me! Be a proper familiar so I don't have to face the fact that I'm going to be the subject of a tribunal to see if I'm an inexprimé! You know what this means! If... if I'd just got a proper one, this wouldn't be a problem! If you hadn't glued yourself into my skull, then I could have showed them you, and you could... you could be a familiar, and humiliate Kirche by having bigger breasts than the bloated _melons_ she has glued to her front and... and I wouldn't have to be the subject of a tribunal! So just... get out of me!"

The last words were shouted.

"_My lady._" The voice was suddenly penitent-sounding, though Louise had her doubts as to how genuine such emotions were. "_I cannot. I am of you, now. And,_" here it suddenly took on a slightly sullen note, "_you are talking to yourself._"

"Oh, I wonder why?"

No response.

The girl let her head fall. "Great," she muttered to herself. "Just... great. Why couldn't I just get a normal familiar, and normal magic, and normal... normalness? Why do I have to have this... thisness? Why is the world so... unfair!"

"_Because it is broken,_" Marisalon said, its voice serious. "_You know this. You have seen it, experienced it, felt it, and so you know it. You are a princess of the Green Sun, Chosen by the Emperor. You are a scion of the creators of the world, of the ones who carved the fabric of creation from the chaos of Beyond, and this power was granted to you to remedy the injustices of the world. You have been betrayed by the world. They were betrayed by the world._" A pause. "_You have this power. Use it. This is your chance, your reason to do __**whatever**__ you wish._"

Louise straightened up, her jawline set. "Yes," she said, simply. "I am not an inexprimé. I know this. Even before, I could make explosions. If they are going to try to kick me out because I didn't summon a proper familiar, they're going to have to find a better way than sticking that... that _slander_ on me and my family, and, above that, implicate that _my_ mother was unfaithful. I will not let this stand."

"_Now you're talking!_" exulted the neomah. "_So, what will you do, fair lady? Take over the school! Hunt down the people who dare to sit in judgement in __**you**__, and show them what a mistake they have made! They shall serve you, or they shall perish! Let your beauty and magnificence shine like the Green Sun himself!_"

"What?" Louise's eyes widened in shock. "No!"

"_Even a little bit of subjugation? Possibly followed by enslaving them as your concubines?_"

The girl ran her hands through her hair. "No," she said, rubbing one brass nail against her lips. "Urgh. No. Have you _seen_ the Headmaster? Yuck. Ick." Louise blinked, anger in her voice. "I'm going to study. By the time the tribunal comes, I am going to be able to do enough to show them that I am not an inexprimé. Would an inexprimé be able to destroy things with green fire?"

"_Um..._"

"No, they would not. Therefore, I am going to find everything that I can do, and I will show them this. And their slander will be dismissed. I have 3 days. Today and tomorrow there are reduced lessons, because we are meant to be getting used to our familiars. Therefore, I am not going to waste time. At all."

Her nails sung into her palms, drawing blood.

"I am _not_ going to fail this. I am _not_ going to fail Mother in this way."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Bandage wrapped around her head, Siesta sat on her bed in the servants quarters, the oil-light guttering. The cut from the fork that one of the little noble brats had thrown had been shallow, but the infirmary had insisted on wrapping it. She suspected that it was just to cover the way that the thing that they'd put in the wound, which had stung like hell, stained the skin yellow. And they hadn't even given her any time to recover.

At least she wasn't being charged for the damaged plates.

She let her tired eyes sink shut, only to open them immediately. That green fire, that branded forehead... they haunted her. Such a thing... was terrifying. And she'd seen the girl, the... the... she'd seen _her_ at breakfast, looking perfectly normal, with no one even watching her. What was this? Were the nobility all mad or something? Or just too full of themselves, too full with the impression that they were somehow the chosen of God and ruled everything to actually think that, oh, maybe someone appearing from a chrysalis of green fire and brass, like some maddened butterfly, _wasn't_ a good thing?

She missed home, right now. She wanted to see her parents and the rest of her family, before... she wanted them here. And at least she had one of her letters for them, tucked into the cupboard where her uniforms were stored. On her next day off, she could give it to Jessica, and it could make its way back to Tardes. It was a pity how little she could tell them, but she hoped it would be enough.

Folding her arms over herself, she shook her head. She could only hope that she slept better tonight than last night. Hope which she suspected was in vain.

_Dear Mama and Papa,_

_I feel I must write to you, though it has only been a month since my last letter. I am well, and my employment remains gainful. I have remembered all that you told me, and my virtue remains intact. As you taught me, we must look shy, but we must also dissuade the men, and sometimes I wish that only a seventh of the legion of men and boys at this place could be as chivalrous as the tales tell us. I was a little ill recently, but I got better. I remember to say my prayers to the Lord and the Founder every day, that we may be redeemed from this world, though its sins and injustices be anathema to us all, so that we may not be forsaken._

_I must sadly tell you that I cannot make my way home for St Marian's Day this year, for it is still in term time and the school will not grant me leave. In my place, therefore, please leave five blue flowers on Great-grandmother Mela's grave, in my place. I hope that we may all see fortune and happiness this coming year, and I, myself, wish that I will see you all again soon._

_May the Founder bless you,_

_Your loyal daughter_

_Siesta_

* * *

{0}


	5. 4: Mistakes Were Made

**A Green Sun Illuminates The Void**

**Chapter 4: Mistakes Were Made**

* * *

{0}

* * *

The childish figure of Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière poked her head out of the bushes, and watched as the servants headed onwards. They were looking for her, but she didn't want to be found. She couldn't face her mother, couldn't face the fact that she had no skill at magic, while her older sisters were so skilled for their ages. Even Cattleya, with her illness, could do more than her. And the servants knew it too; even the help knew that she was useless, knew that the title of _inexprimé_ was being thrown in her direction, and only the de la Vallière name, and the few, uncontrolled, irregular explosions that she could produce was keeping her safe from that.

It was a terrible thing for a six-year old girl to know.

She wished she didn't know, that she didn't have to know.

But the life of a noble had many things that a commoner needed not concern themselves with. Their own duties were to follow the orders of their superiors in blood, to pay their taxes, and to pray to Lord and Founder, nothing more. They did not have to concern themselves with blood purity, with heritage and the potential for ignominy that came with it. Such things were beyond their ken. They could marry for love, not for necessity.

At this moment, Louise would have sacrificed all of this to not have to have overheard the argument between her parents, her father alarmed, her mother scarily intense, on the subject of their youngest daughter.

But now she was in the Secret Garden. Her special place, close enough to the estate to be accessible on six-year old legs, yet far enough away, and isolated enough, that no-one would find her easily. The ark of sarcoma-like flesh sat on the caustic lake, washing up against the green-lit silver sand, and she smiled at the peaceful feeling the place instilled in her.

Louise blinked.

No, that wasn't right. She was standing among knee-high flowers, which bloomed everywhere, filling the air with their fragrant scent, gazing out over the... the water-filled lake. There was a central island, with a single house made of the same white stone as the broken ruins around it, and, more of interest to her, the small boat, with the blanket she kept here, for when she wanted to hide.

The little girl flinched, as she saw a butterfly, cast in bronze, fly into an acrid-green flower, and tear it to pieces. She took a deep, gulping breath. Something here was _wrong_. She wanted to hide, to feel safe and welcome and warm and... she dove into the boat, snuggling into the blankets, and hiding her head under them, began to cry. Closing her eyes, she gazed out over vistas of brass and gold and fire, as two suns, one like molten gold and the other brilliantly green, rose over her.

Someone tapped her on her head, and she opened her eyes, poking her head out from underneath the covering. Silhouetted against the sun (so weak, so feeble, she thought), was a man, his face in shadows. Nevertheless, she still knew him.

"Vi-Vi-Viscount," she squeaked, covering her face so he couldn't see her tears.

She could feel him smiling down upon her, and, internally, a certain warmness and fuzziness set in. Viscount Wardes was a friend of the family, and, despite his youth, he was a frequent guest at her father's dining table. He was tall and handsome and sixteen, which was _old_, and despite all that, he was nice to her. He would bring her presents when he visited.

"Louise," he said, inclining his head. "I... well, I did not expect to stumble across you here. I was merely walking, and..."

"I wasn't waiting for you here," the little girl protested.

She could _hear_ the smile, and it made her heart flutter. "I would not dare claim otherwise, if you say so, fair lady," he said. "But... if you would, I will, as a gentleman, escort you back to your parents. I am here, in fact, to discuss my... your... _our_ engagement, with your parents. It would be a grave disservice to you to not have you grace us with your presence."

Her head retreated back under the blanket with those words, an inaudible mutter escaping from her lips.

Outside her safety of the blanket, she could hear the noise that the man made as he knelt down. "My little Louise," he said, tweaking the blanket away, "don't feel ashamed that you might be afraid. You will grow up to be beautiful and strong, believe me. And if you can't believe in yourself, believe in me, because I believe in you. Do you understand?"

She nodded, mouth wobbling.

"Good," he said, offering her his hand. The Viscount paused for a moment, and reached up, whirling off his hat with a flourish. "For you," he said, golden eyes twinkling out of a golden-skinned, incredibly, inhumanly, handsome face. Before Louise could suck in her breath to scream, the gold flashed into brass, and the luminescence took on a green hue, twisting and entwining and spreading to write out tales, before it too was extinguished, and there was nothing more than a man. A blond, fine-featured man, the signs of his teenage years still on his face, but, merely, a man.

And despite that, despite the normalcy, Louise could not help but feel somewhat disappointed.

Helplessly, she giggled, and put on the hat, clutching tight onto the man's hand as he helped her out of the boat, and they walked together, even though she had to take two steps for every one of his.

And there was applause from the swarm of little girls who stood in front of them.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"_Wake up_," Marisalon shouted at her, from within her head.

Groggily, Louise looked up, her cheek stuck to the page of the book she had obviously been reading before she dozed off. "Wha-?" she managed.

"_You have a class_," the neomah stated, promptly. "_You requested that I wake you before any classes that you have, because you wanted to sleep, and I have followed out the orders you gave._"

"I did not! I don't want to sleep!" Underneath the desk, the girl's hands entwined. "I have to study! I need to show them!"

"_Fair lady, you did. Now, you should probably detach your face from the book, and splash some water to wake up, because it ill-befits you to present a dishabille face to the outside world. Unless that is your most delightfully seductive intent, of course._"

"Why did you let me fall asleep! I was trying to study!" Louise shouted out loud, rubbing her eyes, and lurching over to her washbasin.

"_Why, because you instructed me to_," was the slightly petulant response. "_You said you were going to take a nap in the afternoon, because you had been up all night, but I was to wake you before the mandatory class you must attend. And considering that you could not keep your eyes awake, fair lady, it seemed wise to allow you to do so._"

"Argh! Stupid useless head familiar thing!" Wet-faced, she glared at herself in the mirror. "Argh! Familiars! How... I don't have one... won't accept 'it's in my head and invisible and stupid and perverted' as an excuse!"

"_Then, my fair lady, we must simply devise a way for you to cheat their pathetic, arbitrary tests, must we not?_" Marisalon asked, rhetorically.

"How?" The word was blunt.

There was an embarrassed mental cough. "_Let me get back to you on that one. And that, fair lady, is why you must attend classes; you must learn all you can, so you may exploit their weaknesses_." The neomah's voice was almost oily.

Louise scrubbed at her face with her towel. "You're not doing this just because you want to be a perverted head-familiar over my classmates?" she asked, suspiciously.

"_Not in the slightest._"

* * *

{0}

* * *

The neomah had, technically speaking, told the truth.

"_Mmm... delightful. Why don't you go introduce yourself to that wonderful dark-haired boy? Ooh, ooh, ooh, or maybe that lovely blonde girl? The one with the ringlets. She, especially, looks like the jealous type, who nevertheless has deep, repressed fantasies. And you can certainly make her dreams come true, after all, you are a Princess of the..._"

'Shut up! Perverted thing!'

"_... Green Sun. She is your inferior in __every__ way, but it is good practice to deign to grant pleasure to..._"

'Shut up! Especially during the lesson! And... and I'm n-n-not interested in girls that way!' Louise thought furiously, locking her jaw. 'I'm going to close my eyes now.'

"_Aww..._"

It was not _exclusively_ doing it to leer at Louise's classmates. It was, however, still speculating on their virtues, or lack of them. And then whining about the fact that Louise had closed her eyes, before shutting up. The girl, however, kept them resolutely shut, until she could hear the click of shoes at the front of the room.

"Good afternoon, class," a woman said, with a faint Gallian accent. "I am Miss Emmanuelle Leterme. My runic name is 'The Stargazer', and I will be giving your classes on the ancient, and noble art of astronomy." There was a pause, a nervous cough. "I am sorry for being late; I got a little lost on my way to this place. This _Acadamie_, it is so maze-like in places."

Louise's eyes snapped open. The teacher was a petite woman, with pale, almost translucent skin. She was dark-haired, with an almost doll-like roundness to her face and to her features. Two bright green eyes glittered above lips the colour of corral, but above that, she _tasted_ of cold mornings and snowstorms, with an inner heart of choking soot and heat. The pink-haired girl winced slightly, at the odd feelings of conflicting temperatures played across her skin.

"_Hmm,_" Marisalon remarked, as the momentary glint died in Louise's own eyes. "_Another instance. Her fire is not like that of Hesiesh, and..._ the neomah made a perplexed noise, "_she has a... a feel akin to both Mela, and... and th-the S-S-Silent Wind. But is neither._"

'What are you talking about?' Louise thought back, her interest tinged by the fact that the creature didn't seem to be making any comments about the teacher's appearance.

"_Her elements. They are, and are not, of the traitor Gaia. And the 'winds' appear, distantly, be akin to..._" the voice of the neomah grew louder, unconsciously, "_... to those of the Silent Wind, Ad-Adorjan,She-Who-Was-Once-Adrián. It... it does not make sense._"

The teacher was, naturally, completely unaware of the discussion going on inside Louise's head. Her eyes flicked up and down the amphitheatre-like classroom, pausing for a moment on a few students, especially a blue haired one.

"You!" she said, finger pointed. "I will have your name, please."

"Tabitha."

"Then, Miss Tabitha, it would be pleasing to me if you were to put your book away, for the lesson has begun." The girl complied, and the petite, dark-haired woman nodded once, before striding up and leaning in front of the desk, standing on tiptoes as she fiddled with it. It was only then that Louise noticed that there was a contraption set up on the desk, a sphere about the size of a man's head.

"What's she doing?" Kirche muttered, audibly.

The girl was answered, when a sudden pattern of lights appeared on the

"An astrographical map," Miss Leterme said, her voice, clear. "It is a light, inside a sphere studded with crystal windows. It is most cunning, yes? It creates a projection of the night's sky of a given date. Ah, you should see the teaching centres of Versailles and Greenwich. There, they have whole rooms, which can be reconfigured, using the detailed recordings of the night's sky, taken over the hours of darkness, and so every day on record can be reconstructed. If we were there... but we are not. Therefore, I shall have to teach you astronomy the old fashioned way, through direct observation of the stars."

"Yeah, because we really need to be taught to look at stars," Malicorne grumbled.

The teacher's eyes narrowed. "Foolish boy," she stated, simply. "If you cannot grasp the esoteric arts, then there is no hope for you. You will only be fit to grub in the dirt, unable to grasp the majesty of the sacred Void that lies beyond the world." She gave a desultory shrug. "But... it is of no meaning. I will not teach those who do not wish to be taught. You are free to leave."

There was a rattle of chairs.

"You are also free to fail, for I will show no mercy to those who will not learn," Miss Letterme said, her voice chill. "Go, stay, it does not matter to me. But it may matter to you. It may not."

The disturbance ceased.

"Now," the dark-haired woman began, "I am your astronomy teacher. And astronomy is a more advanced technique. Many of you will lack the skills for the more supernal magics which can be done with it. But everyone, and I mean everyone, can benefit from the skills in _perception_ and _awareness_ and _ability to stay awake for extended periods of time, especially in lessons_, Mr Rochefoucauld."

A boy jolted upright. The Gallian woman tucked back an errant lock of hair, and began to pace up and down.

"You are a second year class. Therefore, there is no need for me to explain basic elemental theory to you, as if you are some mere _enfant_. However, astronomy is a more advanced use. A true astronomer is at minimum a Line Mage, conversant in both Fire and Wind."

Kirche raised her hand, squinting slightly. "Uh. Why?"

"Why?" the teacher echoed. "Why? Why would it be that you would not know? Ah, well, inadequacy." Miss Letterme gave a long-suffering sigh. "You know of the five elements, yes? Am I to presume that you are at least that educated? Fire, Water, Earth and Wind; the so-called exoteric elements."

"_And Wood,_" Marisalon added. "_Also, if you are to be comprehensive, the purifying essence that is Vitriol._"

"But that is, of course, not all."

"_Yep. You forgot Wood._"

'Marisalon, shut up!'

"_No, seriously. Wood. Element of life, growth, fertility... all that stuff?_"

'Wood isn't an element, idiot,' Louise thought back, pleased to be able to show the head-familiar that she wasn't just ignorant. 'There are five elements; Fire, Water, Air, Wind, and the sacred Void. Nowhere is "Wood" anywhere on that list. So, please, just shut up. I'm trying to listen here.'

"I speak, of course, of the sacred, holy, esoteric element that is Void."

"_What._"

'Shut. Up.' Louise paused. I really need to find a way to get into my own mind to punish my familiar, so it won't show this kind of cheek to me, she thought. Or even just find a way to not have to eat, so punishing-it-by-not-eating doesn't also hurt me. It is far, far too cheeky for a mere familiar. Even if it is in my head.

"_Fair lady... I did hear that. But... Void?_"

"Void lies beyond the world, you see," Miss Letterme continued, eyes gleaming. "It is sacred, holy, beyond our mortal ken. Even the stars we see in the night's sky, even the sun itself, are mere Fire, placed in the Void to light it for us. The purity of the Void can only tolerate Fire, you see, as, after all, Fire is closest to the Void in its nature. All things are of the Void, and Fire retains the most of its nature, for it is intangible, only existing as a _process_, not a thing. From Fire descends Wind, for it partakes of dynamism too, and from Wind descends Water, for though they both flow, Water is fettered while Wind is not, and then from the Water, of ancient times, was born base Earth." The hint of disgust in her voice was evident.

This produced mixed reactions in the class, as might be expected. For some reason, the Fire and Wind mages found this a much more palatable idea than the Water and Earth ones.

Certainly, one dark-haired boy leapt to his feet. "That's not how it works!" protested Charles Alexandre de Calonne. "Doctrine, faith and reason alike teach us that the elements are equal, and that the world is built of them. To contradict it is nothing more than the self-aggrandisement of those who would put themselves on a higher pedestal, when all are equal under the Lord."

"_Correct_," muttered Marisalon, voice somehow combining sullenness and interest. "_Superior elements? My lady, that is but foolishness._"

The teacher did not snap back, nor did she inflict some arbitrary magical punishment on the boy. She merely sniffed, in a disappointed manner. "Perhaps," she said, with a half-shrug. "Believe as you will; I am here to teach you, not to indoctrinate you. But if you will reject the evidence of your eyes... well, I can do nothing for you."

She paused for a moment, spinning the projection-globe before her, until a separate pattern of lights was displayed on the board behind her. "And teach I shall." The slight irritated twist of her neck was enough to put lie to her affected lack of concern. "Yes, Miss Tabitha?"

"Constellations," was the blue-haired girl's single word.

"Correct." The black-haired woman pointed towards the patterns of lights. "These are the fourteen constellations. Of them, they are divided into the Eight Exoteric," the wand pointed towards the upper half of the patterns, "and the Six Esoteric. The Exoteric are what you shall be studying this year; they are simple. For example, the Inferno represents Fire in its aspect as Destroyer, while the Knight Errant represents Fire in its aspect as Passion. You shall learn their symbolism, their meaning, the use of Fire magic to divine their progression and shift, and how their behaviour can be used to determine how the seasons wax and wave as the elemental balance of the world shifts. We will not begin with magic, no; the basic mathematics and geometries of the Holy Void must be learned before one may dare to try to incorporate them into magic. The Exoteric Constellations are simple enough; they follow simple enough paths through the Holy Void, and so the higher complexities of astronomy can be ignored with them; should you work hard, it may be possible in four or so months that you might be able to attempt a forecast for the weather."

"Who needs to know that?" Kirche grumbled. "That's farmer's stuff."

"Indeed," the teacher stated, coolly. "And yet it is so much more. Should you master the basics of astronomy, you will be permitted next year to begin your study of the Esoteric Constellations. The Six Siblings, some call them; the Fearful Heart, the Shattered Lady, the Emboldened Will, the Masked Lover, the Angered Thorns, and the Regretful Oath. Their motions require combined Wind and Fire magics, to track them through the invisible supernal winds that blow through the void, but through their interactions with the Exoterics, deeper masteries can be obtained. And beyond that... well, your Tristain lacks a true school for astronomy. There are only three of them, in the world..." she paused, "... well, it is said that the disgusting, heathen elves have made their own discoveries. But we shall not speak of them. As it stands, there are three centres of expertise in the world; there is Versailles, centred around the private observatory of the Gallian Royal Family. There is the Panzano Observatory, in Romalia, which is manned by monks and nuns, and closed to outsiders, the sole demesne of the Church itself. And there is Greenwich, which is _clearly_ the best , due to the elevation of Albion above the fallen Earth, and which I have had the honour of working at. The masteries there, the..." she sighed. "It is wonderful."

"_Hmm._" It was a cold, deliberate word from Marisalon. "_My lady, I do not trust her. At all. One bit. Be prepared if she tries to... although... it is possible that you will not even know until it is too late. Either way, we __must not let her know__ of your rightful and preeminent status as a Princess of the Green Sun._"

'Wait? What?' Louise managed to keep that thought a mere thought, rather than shouting it out loud.

"_I will not talk, unless it is an emergency. Keep all your attention on her at all times. We will speak later, when we are not near her._"

Louise pouted slightly, looking at the teacher with newly wary eyes. The... neomah in her head thought there was a possible risk that the new teacher would try to kill her. This was either some extremely convoluted way for the thing to be all icky and perverted, or it was actually afraid. And... argh! She was meant to be cramming for the tests that they might put her through to test for inexprimé status in her free time, not getting distracted by homicidal teachers and paranoid head-familiars.

She wasn't sure what _else_ could go wrong with the day.

Miss Letterme was apparently ignorant of any change in the expressions of any of her students, caught up in her near-religious fervour for the subject. "You will now copy out all the constellations," she stated. "I will take these in, and I will examine them, and those who cannot do so, will be punished. You must know them, and the angles and relative lengths that make them, _perfectly_, for the slightest change can have mystical significance!"

* * *

{0}

* * *

With care, Professor Colbert turned the page with a white-gloved hand, wincing as the faintly-audible crackle of ancient vellum reached his ears. Even the Earth magics cast on this ancient book were not enough to utterly stop the flow of time and the decay they carried with them, and the man was well aware that he could not keep on handling this book like this. The head librarian was already starting to get a little tetchy about his constant access to this book, even with the headmaster's authority expressly permitting it.

Which was why he was doing what he was doing.

Colbert was rather pleased about this. It was just another of his little contraptions, one of the ones which people felt he wasted his time with, but which he was sure had some greater potential, just like his serpent-in-a-box, which he couldn't _quite_ get working, yet. But this... he knew it worked already. Yes, that he had to expose the silver-coated copper plate to mercury fumes to affix the image was troublesome, and the process of preparing the contraption in the first place left his hands covering in black and yellow stains, but he had shown it worked! He could make perfect copies of books! No longer would people have to worry about bad transcriptions of ancient texts; they could keep them safe, while allowing others to see these perfect copies. It would allow priceless ancient knowledge to be kept safe.

And, yes, the fact that the prepared copper plates were very delicate, and so each one had to be protected a layer of glass was a _minor_ downside, but he was sure that, one day, he could find something stronger! But until then, he would merely make do with what he had.

Raising the elevation of the squat box which contained a fresh plate, he nodded once, and checked his notes. If he was correct, this should get a perfect one-to-one copy of this page. Then he would merely have to take the plate back to his workspace, in one of the old towers, and waft mercury vapour over the plate to fix the image, to prevent any extra light from ruining it, and then he could check that the lens on the front was making a good image. And if it was... well, he could do the rest of the book.

By his estimates, that would take no more than three or four weeks.

And then he would have his own copy of the book, and he would actually be able to properly try to use it as a translation manual for this strange, interesting-yet-confounding script. If he could find the ancestor script to the runic language used in familiar-binding, and do it with his non-magical inventions... well, everyone would see the virtues of them then, surely.

The fact that the image was reversed, and so the text all appeared backwards was nothing in comparison to this marvel!

The mage checked the lighting again, and waved his wand, the muttered incantation causing the small panel in front of the lens to slide away. One hand on his wrist, the man counted his pulse, trying to keep as calm as possible to avoid disrupting his count.

"... two oh six, two oh seven, two oh eight, two oh nine..."

There was a knock at the door. Colbert ignored it.

"... two eleven, two twelve, two thirteen..."

It came again, more intently.

"Come in," he relented. "Two fifteen, two sixteen..." There was a woman coming it behind him, he could tell, from the sound of the footsteps. He really hoped that she wouldn't distract him now, but instead would wait until this process finished, and _then_ he could impress her by explaining what he had been doing.

"Oh, Professor Colbert," the woman asked. The man cocked his head for a moment. Yes, that was the headmaster's secretary, wasn't it? What was her name? "What are you doing in here?"

"Alchemy, two twenty one, two twenty two, yes, alchemy, two twenty four, of a special kind, two twenty six."

"I... see. In a library."

"Yes, two twenty nine. Please, Miss, do not distract me. I will answer questions afterwards, two thirty four, two thirty five..."

Thankfully, mercifully, she did so, and his opinion of her rose. It was only after many long minutes that he could mutter the incantation to slide the shroud back over the box, and relax. He would need to affix the image, but that was the test plate done. Now he could deal with the woman.

Much to his subtle disappointment, she had not been watching him intently, but had instead sat herself down at one of the reading tables, and was silently flicking her way through a book on... he squinted, trying to read upside down... architecture. Or something. Upon noticing his approach, she smiled at him, and nodded, once. "Excuse me if I sound rude asking this," she asked, smiling, "but... what by Founder's Fire were you doing there?"

He grinned. "There's a particularly old book, which will be damaged if I try to read it, even though it's spelled against decay. And I'm going to reference it a lot. So what I'm going to do is copy it, so I don't have to risk such an ancient and priceless artefact." He straightened up a little. "I'm using a device of my own... devise, you see. I call it the _colbertotype_. There's a particularly cunning little alchemical reaction going on, on a silver-coated copper plate which I prepared using certain reagents beforehand, and the lens at the front is much like the ones which the astronomers use... of course, I worked with a few rather skilled astronomers a long while ago, but that's all in the past now, and... do tell me if I'm going too fast... and then after the prepared plate has had the light incident on it, the bright areas change, alchemically, without the use of exterior magic! It's wonderful! And all I have to do is use the mercury vapour, and a few other steps that I don't need to go into now, and I have a copy of a page! And I can do it any number of times! And even make copies of the copies, which will have the text the right way around!"

The fire mage's eyes were gleaming. The woman blinked a few times. "I see," Miss Longueville said, slowly. "So... you're copying a book, yes?"

"Yes!"

"Why not just copy it out? I mean, the Academy does have scribes for exactly that purpose."

Colbert blinked a few times. "Because then it wouldn't be _exact_," he said, slowly. "This is ancient, and has been annotated many times by different authors. I need it to be exact! I need it to be precise!"

The secretary tilted her head. "But won't it be the wrong way around?" she asked, obviously unable to stop herself, but drawn in by the strangely compelling logic.

"That's simple enough. I can simply read it in a device which I've set up, which uses a mirror to _re-invert_ the plate!"

"Hmm." It was a noise, certainly, and one as devoid of opinion as Miss Longueville could make it. It wouldn't do to tell one of the teaching staff that she believed that he had, perhaps, been spending too long around the mercury vapour. Although, "Actually, Professor," she asked, lowering her head slightly, "I was wondering if you could help me."

"Why? Do you need something copied?"

The woman tilted her head. Tempting... but no. "No, I wouldn't dare to ask to ask something of that magnitude from you."

"No, really, it wouldn't be trouble at all. Look, I've already got the equipment out, and..."

"No," she said, with a wide smile. "I was simply wondering where the archival catalogues were. I mean..." she dropped her voice, "... well, the librarians weren't very helpful, and the headmaster requested I check that they were being maintained properly, and to bring him," she checked a piece of paper, in her hand, "... _Le Livre du Nouveau Soleil_, Volume I, _Le Conte du Bourreau_." She paused, and blushed slightly.

"Catalogues, catalogues..." Colbert looked around distracted, his head spinning slightly. "Yes, you see over there, by the shrine to the Founder in his aspect as the Tamer of Winds? Just head right there, and you'll see them. They're bound in green leather, and the typeface on them is golden."

Miss Longueville inclined her head. "Thank you," she said. "You've been very helpful. I hope your... thing turns out all right."

"Oh, yes, yes... if you like, I can tell you about some more contraptions I have made. There's one called the..."

"Perhaps later," the woman said, with another smile.

Colbert shook his head, and glanced back at his _colbertotype_. He just needed to take the plate back to his workbench, and check that the set-up was producing clear images, and then he could begin properly. It was only a small mercy that the headmaster had reduced his teaching hours, while he looked into the oddities of Miss Vallière's... of Miss Vallière, and her... shell thing, and failure to summon a familiar, and... and everything. He should probably send a note of appreciation to the headmaster... and to his lovely secretary, who had probably been the one who had implemented the change. It was so nice to meet someone who showed interest in what he was doing. No one ever seemed to think about the obvious things...

... obvious things. The man blinked, as a sudden idea struck him, and he laughed, at the simplicity. Yes! Of course! The obvious things! He hadn't thought to check it, because it was _so_ obvious! No, he thought, he shouldn't get too excited yet, but... yes!

* * *

{0}

* * *

"_Just a few more grapes... yes, and maybe some juice to wash it down._" The neomah sighed in pleasure, as the girl helped herself to the food in front of her. The food at supper was, as usual, exquisite. "_That's nice. But as for why your teacher alarmed me... well, where to start. At the beginning, your people have their metaphysics wrong. All of Creation is built with five elements, yes, but the fifth element is Wood, linked to life and growth and fertility and... well, such pleasurable things. Certainly not Void._"

The girl blinked heavily. 'I... get these feelings,' she thought, hesitantly. 'I know you're wrong, but... I know you're right. And... that doesn't make sense.'

"_Yes, but some of the things she was talking about. Well, you must be wary of astronomers, never lower your guard with them._"

Louise took a drink of spiced apple juice, and tilted her head slightly. 'What does this have to do with anything?' she asked, mentally.

"_Fairest lady, I do not wish to alarm you unnecessarily, or to distract you from the studying which you insist is vital for your personal satisfaction. But there is a not-inconsiderable chance that there may be a secret conspiracy of astrologers manipulating all of your society in the name of cruel fate, who will send a Wyld Hunt to murder you in an excessively unfair fight._"

Louise's cheeks bulged, and she spewed out a jet of juice. All down Guiche's front. "What!" she barked out loud.

"_And not even the good kind of unfair fight, when you tear them apart and beat them to death with their own limbs, laughing as their futile ant-like struggles show their innate inferiority to your glorious self. In fact, really, my lady, the reason for the murder would be to prevent you from getting the power which would make such things possible. Hence..._"

"Hey, what do you think you're doing, Zero!" the boy snapped, somewhat aggrieved about the wet front. "That's my shirt, and you just ruined it! I've a good mind to..."

"What do you mean I'm going to be killed!"

The boy blinked. "I didn't say you were going to be killed," he retorted, confusion warring with anger.

"Not you, but..." Louise stared out over the vast golden-walled room, lit by the brilliant radiance of almost six hundred souls. The banqueting hall was filled with her peers and their mates, but she glanced over them, through the colossal windows and out at the starless, moonless night beyond. A muscle in her head suddenly twinged, and she refocused, wincing, back at the angry, juice-covered boy.

"_Fair lady. Focus. Deal with the situation. Talk with me later._"

There was a sneer on Montmorency's face, as she said, "Maybe the Zero is just an idiot. A paranoid idiot."

"Now, I did say that I was feeling a bit ill," Malincorne said. "Maybe she misheard."

The rotund boy was ignored.

"It was an accident," Louise said, weakly. "I thought I heard something, and..."

"Do you know how much this shirt cost?"

The girl gave a half-shrug. In all honesty, she had no idea how much a man's shirt would cost. "A lot?" she hazarded.

"Oooh, just like you to shrug off things like that," Guiche's girlfriend interjected. "That kind of attitude disgusts me. That selfish, self-indulgent..."

"Oh, shut up," Louise said to the blonde girl. "This doesn't involve you, so keep your wet... fishiness out of this, Flood."

The argument was already drawing attention from other students. Already, some of the first and third years had joined the second years as onlookers.

"Hey!" Guiche objected, eyes flashing. "You don't get to treat my lovely Monmon that way, or, indeed ruin my rather expensive imported silk shirts merely because you're the Zero." He cleared his throat. "As her loyal and faithful champion..."

Something twisted in Louise's mind; something cool, and simple, and logical. "False," she said, simply.

"False?" Montmorency echoed, as she leapt to her feet, slamming her hands down onto the table, with a rattle of cutlery. "What, are you turning into Tabitha? What do you mean, false?"

Louise tilted her head. What did she mean? Wasn't it obvious? "I mean, he's lying. He's not your loyal champion. Or faithful."

The blonde girl blushed pinkly, and swivelled to face Guiche, her eyes alight.

"My dearest Monmon, I would never cheat on you! She's just saying this to distract you!"

The same hard, crystalline note. "False again," Louise said, sneering slightly as she rose to her feet, hands balled by her side.

"I only have eyes for you, Monmon. Do you really think that I would take another woman out on a date, that another rose could bloom as sweetly as you?"

"False."

Eyes flickering from her boyfriend to Louise, Montmorency got redder and reader, balling her hands into fists. An observant onlooker might have pointed out the wet traces by the corners of her eyes, and the slight twitch in her eyelid.

An observant one, but not a wise one.

"Aww. You didn't know," Louise said, with a smirk. "In fact, I think I have seen him around with one of the first years... what's her name? And... aww, is the Flood about to burst into a flood of tears?"

"That's a lie!"

"False."

"Shut up!" Montmorency snapped, jabbing a finger into Louise's chest. She winced suddenly, her jaw tightening, as she pressed into something that felt far too hard for a human ribcage. "Argh! Are you wearing a breast plate under there, or _are_ you just that flat! No wonder boys don't like you."

Louise narrowed her eyes, which glinted green for a moment. "You can't talk! You're the same!" she retorted, before a cruel smile crept onto her face, sliding over the anger like oil on water. "And I have a fiancé, the Captain of the Griffin Knights, while you can't even hold onto that fop, a lesser son of a _weak-blooded_ house."

A moment of shocked silence.

"Duel," Montmorency hissed.

"What?"

"Duel! You shouldn't even be here, _inexprime_! Take yourself to a nunnery, or off to a reform school, but you shouldn't stay here! And if you're going to stay, I'll show you that for all your vaunted lineage and money and... and everything, you're still a magicless Zero and nothing more!"

Guiche was still staring, jaw slightly open.

"Accepted," Louse said, her voice deathly quiet. "The Vestri Court, at sundown?"

"Yes." The same silence had overcome the other girl. "King Louis' Code Duello?"

"Yes. I will see you there, Flood."

"And I, you, Zero."

As one, they turned on their heels, and stormed off in opposing directions, away from the dining table. The rest of the hall was left in silence.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"_Ah, yes. Your first fight. Fair lady, now is the time to ready your blade, and string your bow. Oh, wait, you don't actually have them. Well, at least you're a monster at unarmed combat. Or not. Much as I hate to gainsay you, my dear mistress, but did you think this through properly?_"

Louise was shaking somewhat. "I had to!" she barked, out loud. "It's a matter of honour!"

"_You felt it. She's more powerful than you are. Although, it must be said, from what I have seen, your 'mages' are rather inefficient at channelling Essence. I don't know. Hmm._"

"She's... how dare she! She... the Flood is a... argh!"

"_This will be a useful chance to obtain data on the combat capabilities of your erstwhile peers, I do believe._

"I was telling the truth! And I know he was lying and... and she knows that he was lying because he's Guiche, and it was her fault for p-poking me and hurting her finger and..."

A pair of first-years looked at Louise oddly, as she walked along, muttering to herself, and occasionally thumping the wall.

"_I'm rather concerned about your wellbeing, you know. Fair lady, we must talk of your code of duel, and the rules you must follow, before..._"

"Founder damn the Flood! I... she... I can't get re-re-revision done because of this! No! No! No!"

"_It would also help if you stopped shouting things out loud. We are getting funny looks. And not the good kind of funny looks, which mean they're fighting with themselves not to tear all your clothes... I'll shut up now._"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Guiche went running after Montmorency as she stormed off, face red and eyes damp. "My dearest Monmon," he began.

_Slap_ went the first blow to his face.

Perhaps he was a little groggy from it, because, all things considered, Guiche de Gramont should probably not have said "I didn't deserve that," and, while all things were still being considered, especially not in that outraged tone. And because he had said it, the second blow went into his gut, and he doubled over, only to receive a knee in his face. Wisely, he collapsed at that point, clutching his bleeding nose with one hand while the other went reflexively to cover his groin.

Fortunately for him, no forth blow came. "How could you!" the girl yelled down at him, stuttering with rage. "You're... you're scum! I... you... you can't keep your eyes off other girls! Your eyes and your h-h-hands! I... and you're just scum!"

"But I thought..."

"Not with your head!" she bellowed, displaying impressive lung capacity. "I knew you we-w-were a lecherous f-fool, but... c-can't you think of how this hurts me?"

"But you were defending my honour!"

That was when the kick came. "You don't have honour!" she shrieked. "I've watched as you flirt with others all the time! I...I...I tr-tried to ignore how Katie sm-smelled like the perfume _I_ made you! I just w-want to get to beat up the Zero, that st-stupid, spoiled, arrogant _inexprimé_. But you and me?" She fumbled in her pockets, pulling out a stoppered cordial of pinkish-purple liquid. "We're through," she concluded, as she poured the perfume down into his head, before storming off again.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The light was already growing dim when the message reached the headmaster's office.

"It seems there are some students dueling at Vestri Courts," Miss Longueville reported. "It's causing quite a commotion. A few teachers have gone there to try and stop it, but their attempts are being impeded by the sheer number of students."

"For heaven's sake, there's nothing worse than nobles with too much free time in their hands," the headmaster sighed, fingers stroking the bowl of his pipe. "I do hope they won't make too much noise. Can't tolerate a racket around my school." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "So, who's involved?"

"Montmorency Margarita la Fère de Montmorency."

"Eugh. Another scion from that burned-out house. Which is ironic, really, considering that they're all water mages. Get it? Get it?"

"Most droll, headmaster."

"They're all a bunch of wet fishes, you know. Cold, vicious, and they hold grudges like nobody's business. I knew her grandmother, you know; lovely lady, in a not-very-nice-but-my-did-she-have-beautiful-legs way." The old man let out a peculiar noise, which was half sigh, and half wince, as if he was combining remembered pain with beauty. Which was, not surprisingly, what he was doing. "And his opponent is?"

"Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière."

"Ah."

"Should I have it broken up, sir?"

Headmaster Osmond raised his hand. "No," he said, his voice suddenly taking on a querulous note. "I think it would be _dishonourable_ for us to interfere with this matter of _honour_. The nobility, after all, do have their obligations to Lord and Founder, after all, and a matter of honour is sacred."

Miss Longueville narrowed her eyes, leaning forwards onto his desk. "And that's not at all because you want to watch two teenage girls, one of whom is a water mage, have a fight? Where it is almost certain that they will end up wet? And, perchance, even muddy?"

"Not in the slightest," the old man said, with a dismissive wave. "I will, of course, have to watch them from afar, to make sure I can examine their... potential."

The secretary shot him an aggrieved glare through narrowed eyes, as she retreated from the room.

"Ah, my dear Longueville," the man said softly, once he was sure she had left. "Why would I be interested in such unripe fruit, when I can have your bountiful blessing leaning over my desk?" The mouse crawled out of his sleeve, and chittered. "Yes, my dear Mótsognir, I do now know what I'm doing, and, no, I am not going crazy," he replied, arching his eyebrows. "You've known me long enough to at least give me the benefit of the doubt." He reached into his desk drawer with one hand, and bought out a handful of seeds, which he began to feed to his familiar, one by one. "As far as I'm concerned, this duel can end two ways. Either Miss de la Vallière wins, and she will have to show magical ability to do so, or she will lose, and either be seriously injured, killed, or merely humiliated. We won't let her die, after all, because that would be _bad_, but a serious injury or humiliation? Well, that might just have to make her withdraw from the school, and so we won't have to have the whole rigmarole of expulsion if she is an _inexprimé_." He sighed in pleasure. "So much more pleasant and neater all around."

The mouse squeaked at him.

"Ah, yes. I did promise that I'd obtain you another consort, didn't I? Tomorrow, my little god-emperor-in-chief of mice, tomorrow."

* * *

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* * *

The Vestri Court was on the west side of the Academy, and so for the majority of the day was always somewhat shaded. Compared to the botanical extravagance of its counterpart to the east, it was much plainer. Instead, the gardeners competed with each other in the arts of topiary and aesthetic placement of vegetation and natural features, going for a minimalistic, subtle approach.

This was, naturally, largely ignored by the student body, who had decided that the lack of expensive or rare flowers meant that all the plants here were much more expendable. It was the favoured site for duels, and, indeed, wacky hijinks of the type that only bored teenage mages could get up to. The gardeners had long since got used to the tendency for trees to be burned, grass to be wrecked by uncontrolled windstorms, and 'roses' to be... deflowered.

There had only been two third year students engaged in the latter activity when the crowds had begun to arrive, and they had made their own exit from behind the rose bush, with a minimum of fuss. And now the place was packed with students who had heard the rumours.

Louise and Montomorency stared at each other. There were no words to be said. Neither were prepared to stand down, and thus the spectators were denuded of the benefit of pre-match banter. A few did ask Guiche what he thought of it, but the boy was lurking in the crowd, his nose remarkably red, and he seemed ill-inclined to begin with his normal extravagant and florid prose. It was, therefore, left up to Charles Alexandre de Calonne to give the customary introduction, and it had to be said that that showmanship was not among his virtues.

"... and so the... um... Loiuse, and... the Montmorency... uh, she's also called Montmorency, although that's also her family name, have come to blows. Well, they haven't actually struck each other, but..." he looked down at the piece of paper in his hand. "Oh yes. I'm meant to ask you if either of you are willing to step down, or if honour demands that you come to blows."

"I will not stand down," Louise said, coldly. "She has insulted my honour, and I cannot let this stand."

"Likewise," was her rival's response.

"Then... okay, King Louis' Code Duello," the boy turned over the piece of paper, and scanned down. "Ah yes. The fight... I mean, duel... shall continue until one party concedes, or until one party is rendered unconscious or... um... dead, although modern laws mean that this is still murder, so... really, please, don't kill each other. Really." He glanced down again. "Oh, and if the duel continues into the hours of darkness, either party may choose to step out, and full honour will be retained by both sides, and... um... it's bad form to challenge them again straight away."

"Don't worry. That won't be needed," Montmorency said, coolly.

The boy winced, and straightened up, sounding more confident. "Then I will require you meet in the centre of the field, shake with your left hands, and then take fifteen paces from each other." His eyes flicked up and down, and he refrained from making a comment on their heights. "The duel will commence upon a mutual count of three, and no sooner."

Then he scampered away from the line of fire. And, more relevantly, the line of Water.

"_Well, this is a fine mess you have gotten us into this time, Louise,_" Marisalon said, voice dry, as Louise took the steps.

'Huh. What are you talking about?'

"_She's water-aspected. Therefore, she will be skilled at the martial arts, and you are not accomplished with combat, yet. And we lack weapons_"

'Huh?'

"_It will be necessary to... improvise._" The neomah took an imaginary breath. "_Listen to my guidance,_" she said, all levity gone from her voice. "_I've survived Malfean street gangs. You can't win yet through sheer power, so you can't let yourself have any limits._"

'What?' Louise's breath quickened. "What do you mean," she said, lips barely moving.

"_I mean... count, and then immediately jump to the side. Head left, and you can get behind the statues. There's a chest high wall there, and those are vital for survival in the City. Keep her at range._

Louise counted. And the advice was good advice, because the jet of water followed shortly afterwards broke against the stone, spraying mist into the air. And a second one, leaving the air hazy with mist. The girl panted. This... this was scary up close. This was scarier than even that time Cattleya had a fit and... a jet of water knocked the head of statue off, and she squeaked.

"You're hiding!" Monmorency called out. "You're just a coward, Zero!"

Right, right, right, Louise thought to herself, mind a blur. What can I do? I can... um... sort of tell what kind of magic people use? And tell if they're lying?

Useless.

Burning time.

"_Green Sun Nimbus Flare?_" Marisalon asked.

The girl nodded, once. "Yes," she whispered. "I just need to get close enough to... eeek!" A desperate dodge was all that she could try to avoid the wall of water which came rushing down over the chest-high wall.

Try, and, incidentally, fail.

The torrent of water left her bruised and battered, and incidentally tore away her mantle, leaving her now-worryingly-translucent blouse fully exposed. Over and over she rolled, adding mud to the water, before she managed to pull herself to a stop. She could hear a distant 'Does she want to surrender?', but that was mostly drowned out by the ringing in her ears. And above her, the mist coalesced, all that moisture thrown into the air suddenly forming a single blob above her, and hammering back down.

The air was punched out of her lungs. But it came out as a laugh. Suddenly, the pain was there, yes, but it was only pain. Only something lesser, something _weak_, something _inferior_ and _lesser_ and... Louise was on her feet again, seeing straight, her back as straight and unbowed as a reforged blade.

And her arm whipping out in an arc, the handful of turf she had picked up which she was down smashing into Montmorency's chest, and leaving a big messy stain there.

"That's just dirty!" the other girl yelled. "Fight like a proper mage!"

"I was _aiming_ for your stupid face," Louise muttered, through gritted teeth, as she set into a run, trying to circle back into the undergrowth. There were boos from the audience, somewhere in the not-trying-to-hurt-her distance, but she ignored them. She had a distinct feeling that she was only still upright because her opponent wasn't that good at aiming, and that was aggravating. She was still losing... well, temporarily at a disadvantage to... someone who... she reached out, and grabbed the branch of the neatly trimmed tree, pulling it clean with the sound of splintering wood.

It was strange. She had always wanted to be a _proper_ mage, to be able to cast proper spells with a proper wand, but now, right now, she felt infinitely more comfortable with this solid branch in her hand than her wand. Which she had dropped somewhere on the field, she realised.

Obviously, the other girl's thoughts were running in a similar direction, albeit from a rather different starting point. "Aww, everyone!" the blond girl called out. "The _inexprimé_ has her own, _super-special_ wand."

There was laughter, and Louise's knuckles whitened around the branch. It wasn't _fair_. Nothing ever was. She had a perfect bloodline. She was among the best theoreticians in her class. She knew the occult connections, the symbols, the runes they'd been taught. And yet she couldn't even get a normal familiar, which could do more than make unhelpful comments, or cast spells, or...

"_Fair lady, break her wand, and she can fight you as you fight her. That would be poetic, would it not?_"

That was a possible solution, yes. And... now that the weapon was in her hand, the pink-haired girl could feel memories... feelings... _something_ rushing in. She knew how to fight, she knew; she'd just forgotten it. She...

... she could do this.

_She depends on range. Strike hard. Strike fast. Kill the sorcerer while they are vulnerable casting, break through their bodyguard and their deva or demons, and then you can slay them, for they cannot protect themselves._

_And __**use**__ the fact that she thinks you comical with an improvised weapon in your hand._

Slowly, Louise began to edge forwards, branch held in a guarding position.

A whip of water lashed out, snapping into her cheek faster than she could even try to move to block. There was pain, but in the deadened sense that seemed to push away all other distractions. A second lash, and she managed to move the branch into the way, breaking the flow, though she felt the shiver run up her arm.

A sudden thought struck Louise, at the exact moment that the third whip snapped into her jaw. How much will could the Flood summon, anyway? She had to be burning through it pretty quickly, to keep on pulling off magical effects like this, and Louise didn't recall the other girl being very combative at all.

She grinned. It was not a very pleasant grin, from a face bruised and with two prominent red whip-marks on it, but it was there. She really didn't think that Montmorency wanted to hurt her seriously; humiliate her, yes, bruise her, but actually hurt her? No.

And she'd just found that pain made everything clearer.

"You're just not very good, Flood," she taunted, her tone indiscriminately callous. Even as she spoke, she continued to advance, slowly, inexorably, trying to make the other girl exhaust her will. "You don't need to keep on doing this. It's not my fault you can't keep your boyfriend from straying. Give up, don't take it out on me!"

The words hit home with unusual force, too; she could see how the other girl's jaw tightened. The crowd was fickle, too, it seemed; they too stirred, and the sense of public opinion began to shift. And then another spell began; longer, the arm-movements wild, less controlled.

"_Watch out!_" Marisalon shrieked.

"Aqueous Lance!" the blonde yelled.

The spear of water leapt straight for Louise's head. And it impacted, punching straight through.

In a sudden moment of frozen time, silver sand swirled and glinted in the air in dust-devils, dancing behind the pink haired girl.

Louise grinned, aware yet uncaring of how her facial muscles screamed from the exertion. Wow. She didn't know she could do that.

"I am invincible," she muttered to herself.

And the pink-haired girl compounded her mistake, because the jet of water came back around, freezing, and suddenly turning. It struck her in the small of the back, in the kidneys.

Louise fell forwards, blood clearly welling up to stain the back of her wet blouse scarlet and pink. She seemed about to topple, when she caught herself on one knee, head flopping to one side. The expression of shock on Louise's face matched that on Monmon's, just for a second. And then... suddenly the humanity fled from the face of scion of the de la Vallières, to be replaced by a sudden, ferocious, monstrous rage.

From a dead start, she leapt for Montmorency. The blonde girl squeaked, and hurriedly pulled the waters that were now pooling around into a hasty, sloppy wall. Louise only snarled, and beat her hands into the barrier, clouds of steam erupting, lit by an eerie viridian radiance. Both hands punched into the wall of water, and despite the desperate chanting from behind it, Louise _pulled_ it apart, parting the defence like a curtain. A sudden snarl and tear, and a fresh cloud of steam erupted, as the entire barricade fell apart uselessly, and the pink-haired girl charged through. The charge connected with the other girl's stomach, and the two went down together, Louise on top, into the water-soaked earth. At some point the water-mage's wand went flying, possibly due to the fact that Louise was slamming her arm over and over again into the ground, but the violence continued.

The child of the Montmorencies did not lie there and take the blows, as the two rolled over and over. She fought back, trying to leverage her slight advantage in height to pry the other girl off her, but the pink-haired girl seemed stronger, too strong for her build, and far, far too fast for the tiny, skinny weedy Zero. Monmon could feel that her right arm just didn't seem to be moving properly and she was feeling faint already from the willpower she had used in the battle and her shoulders were slammed into the ground again, her head impacting against hard turf, and _ooh, everything had gone all bright and glowing and pretty and shiny and there was another impact and she was going to throw up and the Zero's head was glittering in the odd light and there was a tearing pain in her face as nails were raked down her face and everything was going all fuzzy and..._

Eyes wide, Professor Kaita, a lanky, somewhat vain wind mage, and two third years managed to pry the tiny figure of Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière off the prone figure of Montmorency Margarita la Fère de Montmorency. It was far harder than it should have been. She kicked and fought, to an extent that the two students had to grab her arms while the teacher muttered an incantation, and eventually the gales he called pulled her away.

"Miss Vallière," the man barked, before trying again. "Miss Vallière, please! Calm down! This duel is _over_!"

Those last words seemed to be enough to get through to the girl, because she ceased to thrash, the motion replaced by limpness, and a groan. Followed by a whimper, as the red spread further.

There were mutterings from the crowd.

"What just happened?"

"Did that go through her head?"

"... just went _berserk_."

"_Green_ fire? But... I didn't know she was a Fire mage."

"Mmm, two muddy girls wrestling." That particular comment was followed by a slap.

"The blonde's also hurt pretty bad," one of the third years said, his wand out, water engulfing his hand. "I can close the cuts, but..." he winced, "I'm not good with anything more major. And her shoulder's dislocated."

The man paused for a moment. "Then get over here and see to her back, enough that we can move her properly," he said, waving his wand and lowering Louise down to the ground. "You, maids," Professor Kaita barked at a pair of the helping staff in the crowd, their distinctive uniforms having drawn his attention. "Stop slacking and help me get these two girls to the infirmary!"

The dark-haired maid nodded. "Right away, Professor," she said, inclining her head, to conceal her slight smile.

* * *

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	6. 5: Repetitious Succubus Bemoaning

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 5: Repetitious Succubus Bemoaning**

* * *

{0}

* * *

"You tried to st-stab me through the b-back!"

"You dislocated one of my arms and g-gave me a concussion!"

"Attempted m-m-murderess!"

"I could say the s-same to you, Zero!"

In retrospect, it might not have been the wisest opinion to put Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière and Montmorency Margarita la Fère de Montmorency in the same room of the medical ward. Unfortunately, as they were assured by the chief healer, they were suffering a minor outbreak of pentapox among the first years, and so they had to keep the infected isolated, meaning they had a shortage of beds. The two of them were merely injured, and so could be put in the same ward without the risk of spreading the infection.

And so the two of them were lying in bed in the white-painted infirmary, glaring at each other as the sunset streamed through the windows. Louise was flushed, sickly-feeling, with a temperature and nausea; her waist was constrained by the almost corset-like layers of bandages which bound her midsection. The wound wasn't infected; water magic had made sure of that, and the healer had diagnosed it as an imbalance in her physiology caused by the shock of the injury.

They hadn't mentioned that the injury was healing faster than it should have, quite notably so.

And in the other bed, Montmorency was bandaged up, the white soaked in many places where a nasty-smelling blue potion had been used to clean out the wounds. Although her dislocated arm had been put back in its socket and healing magic applied, she was still in a state that only bed rest could really fix her problems.

In essence, neither girl was exactly capable of doing much, apart from insulting each other and bickering.

"_Fair lady, though I may say so myself, you are capable of doing much more that merely bickering with this defeated foe! Pain should mean nothing to you, you and I know this! And you have much more important things to do!_"

'Shut up! I want to lie in bed, and don't want to have to go to classes.' Inside her head, Louise was humming with... well, she wasn't quite sure what she was humming with. Prosaically, possibly the fever that the healers were claiming that she had, that her body temperature was notably higher than it should be. And she was feeling rather sick. But on the other hand, the headmaster had come in, and told her that the investigative tribunal against her was being dropped! That she had been observed using magic, in a way which an _inexprimé_clearly could not, and hence there were no grounds to proceed! It was glorious!

... now, on the other hand, he had also informed the two of them that they were going to be punished by the school, for illegally duelling, and possibly it would be taken to the Crown, because – and the old man's eyes had suddenly turned stern – from a certain point of view, they had both tried to kill each other.

But still! She wasn't an _inexprimé_! She wasn't a failure in that specific way! And so she should get to spend a few days in bed doing nothing but resting, rather than forcing herself to do anything!

She nodded, distractedly, at the dark-haired maid, who placed a fresh cup of water by her side, following the figure idly – and to the neomah's appreciation – as she delivered a second glass to... argh, Montmorency. She winced, slightly, as she sipped at it, not enjoying the bitter taste, which reminded her far too much of the smell of some of the medicinal elixars which had to be kept back at the estate for Cattleya.

If only 'the Flood' wasn't here with her, preventing her from relaxing properly, when _Monmon_was the one who'd starting the 'hurting people' business. And she wasn't starting to worry about the more serious consequences that might have come about from duelling like this. And Marisalon wasn't nagging her about...

"_... but, my Lady, you remain tasked with your cause in the name of the Reclamation of Creation from the cowards and traitors who most cruelly cast down those who crafted it from inchoate chaos. You must infiltrate the city of Paragon, and most nobly covert the Perfect of that place, whether the current one or his... successor, should you choose to retain that system of governance after your inevitable triumph, to the glorious cause! Only then may the worship of those who Created the world be spread properly across the South!_"

... something or other. That wasn't her prime concern. No, it was something deeper. More nagging. More concerning.

She hadn't felt any need to go to the toilet since... well, since whatever had happened that had jammed Marisalon into her skull. Via... ahem... either path. She didn't feel any urge to either, right now. And she pretty sure that... she counted the days on her fingers... she was pretty sure that four days was getting to the 'unhealthy' level, especially since she had been drinking a lot of fluids, as she had been told by the healers.

It wasn't exactly a subject that she felt that she could broach with the infirmary staff, either. She didn't feel sick, or ill, or feel like she needed to go.

It was just _embarrassing_.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Headmaster." The man in the blue-trimmed white robe, a neat clerical collar underneath came scurrying up to the old man, and Osmond squinted at him, as if trying to remember his name. "I am Abbé Cotin, headmaster," he reminded the older man, "... although you..."

"Ah, Charles!" Osmond said jovially, "How are you doing nice to see you I really must go..."

"With respect, sir, I am an abbé, and it is improper to..." He had to jog a few paces, to catch up with the older man, who was moving with unexpected speed. "I really must object to you making me put those two in the same room!"

With surprising force, the headmaster grabbed him by one sleeve, and pulled him into the nearest room. Which happened to be one of the dusty cupboards where the staff kept the fire safety equipment, in case of accidents with young Fire mages.

"Nonsense," the white-haired man whispered conspiratorially, after a bout of coughing, leaning close to the priest's ear. "It is my will that it be so!"

"But, sir," Abbé Cotin said, himself choking on the layered dust. "I don't think that..."

"No so loud! It might be heard by... _them_..."

A blank stare. "By... who?"

"_Them!_"

"With respect, I don't know who..."

"_Them!_"

"Just saying..."

"_Them!_" The old man's brows were creased, his eyes wide. "Do not ignore me, man! I cannot tell you of _them_, for _they_could be listening to us right now! Just like how they add too much salt to my food!"

The healer blinked, and squinted, tugging back a lock of greying hair. "The two girls? Miss de la Vallière and..."

"No. _Them._" Osmond tilted his head. "Well, and the girls, too. Wouldn't want them to realise that that you were deliberately putting two teenage girls in a place filled with plump, plump pillows and making them wear those delightfully thin hospital gowns, would we, Charles?"

Abbé Cotin puffed himself up. "The infirmary is a place of healing and prayer," he said, in an outraged tone, "not... not base perversion like that!"

"He he." The two words were spoken, rather than laughed. "That's what you think, but you should keep a better eye on your commoner nurses. I certainly have been!"

The clergyman was turning redder and redder at every word, not helped by the choking dust in the storage cupboard. He spluttered an incoherent response, before storming out, leaving the headmaster alone.

Osmond smiled, a slow, lazy laconic smile, which was almost reptilian in its age. "And that, my dear Mótsognir, is how _I _resolve the problem," he told the mouse, which crawled out of his sleeve. "That dear foolish man will have been so outraged by my insinuations, that he will keep a closer eye on those two young ladies who have caused me so much trouble. And he does annoy me, so; how dare the Crown 'suggest strongly' that I hire an Abbé for this position! This will keep him off guard, and give him something interesting to tell his masters. Think I'm crazy? Hah!"

The mouse squeaked at him.

"Ah, no, my dear Mótsognir. Your suggestion was foolish, and too overt. We shall not interfere with Miss de la Vallière. No matter how much you feel she is a threat to the security of the school, she is too... unusual. Now, what else was I going to do?"

Another squeak, and the mouse ran back inside his robe.

"Oh, yes. I was going to go to Miss Emmanuelle Leterme, and show my 'appreciation' for her lessons and how well she's settled in. I do love these Gallian beauties; why, were it not for that commoner hair colour, she could well be a member of _Les Lignées Triomphante_. I don't know how I'd cope without you, Mótsognir, I really don't. Even if you are rather lacking in subtlety."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Montmorency stirred, lifting her head up. She was feeling better, overall; it no longer hurt quite so much to move, but she still _ached_. Especially her right arm; she had peeked under the bandages, and the arm was ringed in bruises, purple and green blossoming around all of the joints, and hand-shaped swellings at her wrist. The blonde flexed her wrist, and immediately regretted it, because it _hurt_.

The girl gasped for breath, the mix of the medicinal scent of the infirmary and the spring air filling her nostrils. Ow. Yes. It still wasn't much better. With her other hand, she reached over to the table beside her, and picked up the glass, tucking it under the crock of her injured arm. Then, taking her wand in her left hand, she wetted the end, and, muttering to herself, applied a simple pain-killing spell, sinking back in relief as the coolness hit.

She had panicked when the healer had warned her about using magic. With two older brothers who were _inexprimé_, unable to inherit and good for nothing apart from marriages to commoner mercantile houses or joining the church, the fear of anything happening to her magic was a long-held, albeit irrational terror of hers. It had been reassuring to hear that it was simply because her right arm needed to heal, and the arm gestures for casting would put unnecessary stress upon the damaged flesh.

Although, what kind of a mage needed to cast spells using their dominant hand? Surely a rather inflexible one. Wouldn't anyone who knew any healing spells make sure that they could cast the basic ones, like the ones that clotted bloodflows, and stopped pain, with their weaker hand, if only because in a case where you couldn't use your right hand, that's exactly when you'd want the spell that stopped you dying?

Of course, that chain of thought led back to the girl in the other bed, who seemed to be dozing again. Yes. Such a trick wasn't much use against a berserk maniac like the Zero. Montmorency shook her head. That kind of thing, it was associated with Germanian nobles, or... the girl smirked, slightly, the nobles of the upper reaches of Albion, the ones who were said to get up to unspecified but clearly foul and peverse things with orcs.

What was _up_with her magic? She blew things up, couldn't manage even the most basic controlled spell, and then in that fight... well, Monmon knew that she hadn't been feeling at her best by the end, because she'd been burning through her willpower to pull off some of the tricks, but... the girl shook her head, still feeling slightly light-headed. She'd managed to break that Water Wall, and that was a Line-level ability. The blonde had been so happy when she'd managed to do that for the first time, and... there had been that green light and then everything had gone fuzzy. And hurty.

There was a gagging noise from across the room, and Montmorency saw the pink-haired girl, who was actually looking fairly green herself right now, grab for the bowl by her bedside table.

And then she started retching, nosily.

Montmorency quickly looked away, out the window, and clasped her hands over her ears, humming to herself to drown out the sound of the other girl.

By the time she looked back, the pink-haired girl, although still looking unwell, was at least no longer throwing up. Louise grimaced, and stared back at her. "Don't be sick when you don't have anything in your stomach," she managed weakly, no acrimony in her voice. "It hurts."

"Um..." The blonde paused, one finger twirling in a ringlet. "Thanks for the advice, I suppose? Have you..."

"Mmm hmm. I think you must have been asleep. Last night. And the night before it." One pale, shaky hand was wiped across a pale face. "At least I don't get the cold sweats anymore," Louise muttered, to herself.

Montmorency had overheard her. "Oh, that's nice," she said, acidly. "It's nice to see you feel no guilt or anything about _trying to kill someone!_"

"I wasn't talking about... hey! You started it! You f-fired a magical spear at my f-face!"

The debate resumed. With ice-cold witticisms. And much vitriol.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Miss Chevreuse may have been giving a class on the base elements, and their transitive properties which were retained within higher-order transmutations, but only limited attention was being paid by the class. For one, the spells discussed here were only of very limited use to non-Earth mages, and were in fact another symptom of what the Academy called 'the holistic approach to magic to better understand it and its uses', but which newer, leaner schools called 'the lack of specialisation hampering the progress of students'. For two, it was almost dinner, and the attention of the students fell rapidly as hunger consumed the mind.

And for three, there were other, more interesting discussions going on.

"So, how you holding up, Guiche?" Malicorne asked, the rotund boy leaning back in his seat.

The blond flicked his hair. "Oh, it is nothing," he said. "I am of course worried for my dear Monmon, hospitalised like this in such fell circumstances, but..." his voice dropped, "... she didn't mean it when she claimed that we were through. That was just her way of showing bravery when fighting the Zero!"

The boys to either side of him rolled their eyes.

"Yep, she left you. And that's rough, buddy," Charles Alexandre de Calonne said, once again showing the unbelievable levels of empathy he possessed, even by the standards of teenage boys. "Now, on the other hand, we can always return to the much more interesting topic of Louise the... well, I don't think we can call her the Zero anymore."

"No, of course not! I'll win her back, and next time, I will fight the Zero with my bronze golems, casting her down into the depths of ignominy," Guiche continued, who quite clearly hadn't been paying attention. "And in the heights of my triumph..."

"Master de Gramont," snapped the teacher. "Silence yourself, or I will silence you!"

There was a pause, as they waited for her attention to drift.

"Heh," Malicorne remarked.

"Heh," agreed Charles.

The blond's fingers tapped against the table. "What would you two know about it?" he hissed. "I note the remarkable lack of success from both of you in the romantic field."

"I don't need to be successful. My parents have a marriage set up for me," Charles said, drily. "And I'm just saying, now you're free to pursue Katie in public without being afraid of Montmornecy freezing your blood to ice." He blinked. "And before that. Yes. Louise... we can't call her a Zero. That was actual, useful magic she showed there."

He didn't mention that she had been casting it without a wand, which was something that almost no dot-level mages could do, and which required specialist training, like that which was given by organisations such as the Griffin Knights, or the Church's Knights of the Iron Rose. He wasn't quite sure what to think of that yet.

"... still zero familiar," Guiche said sullenly.

"I'm serious." The dark-haired boy's eyes were narrowed. "A dot-level fire mage shouldn't be able to burn through a line-level water barrier. The elements are in classical opposition. And that was... freaky green fire," he said, eloquently. "Where do you get green fire?"

"The dead ones," Malicorne muttered, staring down at his desk.

Charles blinked. "Uh. Um. I was about to suggest that she's Fire and Earth, because copper burns green, and I saw... well, I think she deflected a blow using sand or something. It looked like it was about to hit her in the head or something. Makes sense as Fire and Earth. But... the dead ones?"

"The lands in our family estate are... swampy," Malicorne said, glumly. "There are water spirits there, but they're... wrong. They burn these greenish lanterns, and my father says that our peasants sometimes drown because they're lured off the path by them." He shuddered. "And then they say that the dead sometimes come back and rap at the window, and if you see a green light outside, you should never answer the door."

"... so, what you're saying... have you ever seen one of these sprits?" Charles asked.

"No, but..."

"Because, I mean, I know that marsh gases are Wind, with the essence of Fire bound within them, which can be released by a single spark, and which can burn funny colours. So, really, what you're saying is that your peasants sometimes get lost in the swamp and drown?"

"Sure." It was a single, flat word. "If you say so."

And then Miss Chevreuse started to ask questions of the class, and there was no more time to talk.

{0}

In the woods around the Academy, it was dark and smelt of leafmold and clay and dampness. The blue moon had not risen yet, and so Taksony alone shone down upon the lands, casting things into a fell red light. Under this illumination, it was hard to see anything straight on; one saw best out of the corner of the eye. It was easy to miss things.

None could miss the sealed and barred gates to the Academy, standing strong and fortified. They were vast, imposing, layered in magical wards and could – and had – take a cannon barrage straight without leaving a dent on the heavy iron framework. Under this crimson light, when viewed from certain angles, they glinted, the light reflecting off them not-quite-right, while from other angles, they didn't reflect light at all. They were a sign of a magical strength of Tristain, that, despite the fact that it was the smallest of the Brimirian nations, it had preserved the strength of the blood best, and had the most number of mages per commoner of any of them. That they could build something like this was a sign of this strength; it rivalled anything outside the Vatican.

And that served Siesta just fine, as she softly closed the door to the servant's way behind her. A shortly after the building had become a school, the headmaster had decided that it was an inconvenience to have to open and close the gate to receive deliveries, and let the servants get in or out. So there were additional doors added, which were far less impressively magical, but could be moved without vast clanking chains and grinding mechanisms waking everyone up.

Now, of course, this was an obvious weak spot, and at the time, the headmaster laid down strict instructions that the doors were always meant to be guarded.

Emphasis on 'were always _meant_ to be'.

Siesta darted into a pool of shadow, and paused, her breathing slow and steady, eyes scanning the walls, looking for guards picked out in the light of the red moon Taksony. Raising her gloved hands, she checked that her hood was up properly, breaking up her profile and veiling her hair, and sunk lower, the garment pooling around her. The human eye looked for human shapes, after all.

Some people thought that the best way to sneak around was in an expensive black hooded cloak. They were almost without exception spoilt nobles. A dark greenish-greyish-brown was both far more effective, and, helpfully far cheaper than black velvet.

And the guard patrolling the walls was gone, and she was off again, into the woods. She was one of the serving staff, and she had learned things. Like where the arboretums, where, under expensive Romalian-imported glass, the school grew certain less-common alchemical ingredients. Many of the herbs within had been imported from exotic climates, from the isolated islands in the west which only a few Gallian traders had ever visited, and some seeds even from strange Rub' al Khali, beyond the lands of the elves.

It was such an irritation that it was still spring, this early in the season. She wouldn't have had to have risked this later in the year, as deadly nightshade or foxglove would probably have sufficed. Probably. She thought.

Although her mother _had _taught her these things, she hadn't actually used them for more than spiking a particularly... pushy noble brat's soup once, and smirking as the boy had apparently voided his bowels in class. She hadn't actually... you know, made anything to poison anyone properly. Even a vile anathema. That's why she had been stealing ingredients from the healers, under the pretext of bringing them meals, and using them on the de La Vallière girl, who was... um... well, she was being sick, but didn't seem to be dying or anything more than that. Probably something to do with the terrible tales of the anathema she had been told as a little girl, and how hard they were to kill. She'd thought they were just tales, things that didn't really exist, and after her grandfather had confirmed their existence, she had prayed that none were really around.

Now one was. She was the only one of the family around.

And Siesta was running out of time. The noble healers at the infirmary were getting suspicious about the girl's 'illness', and would probably start to look beyond her injuries soon. She needed something stronger. More potent.

Or, in actual fact, what she was going to do was grab as many things as she could recognise, or which looked nasty, and mix them together in something with honey. That would have to be lethal, right?

* * *

{0}

* * *

Sensible flat shoes echoing down the corridor, Miss Loungeville turned the corner, and entered the sweltering heat of the school kitchens. The appetising scent of roasting meat was already filling the room, and she felt her mouth water slightly, even as she averted her eyes from where a bulky man with a meat-cleaver was busy de-boning a cow's ribcage, the gore covered bones going into their own cauldron.

Although the finished product would look perfect, she didn't want to see the messy guts of the preparation process. Everything was so much less elegant , if you knew how the trick worked.

Tapping her foot, she waited for one of the senior chefs to pay attention to her. After a minute and a half of that, she actually went and approached the exceptionally busy people, and ordered them to find the head chef, who was, after a search, found in a backroom berating one of the new scullery girls for her ineptitude at sorting the spices.

"... and you placed the rosemary on the top shelf, which is saved for the most sensitive of flavourings, which is an unforgivab..." he turned, and smiled genially, his chins bulging. "Ah, yes. The headmaster's secretary, yes?" he asked, the faint accent of a native of the border with Gallia present in the way he rolled his Rs.

The woman smiled, the expression not reaching her eyes. "Yes," she said. "The headmaster requested that I personally deliver his instructions for dinner tomorrow night... not that I didn't have better things do to," she added, to herself. "I mean, it's not like I have his reports for the Palace to file..." she shook her head, and handing him the note.

The man smiled, nonetheless, at the words. "Ah, yes please, Miss." The wax seal was broken, and he scanned down the note. And his face fell, fat sagging in folds around his neck. "He... wants the meal unflavoured," the chef said, slowly.

"Yes," the secretary said, lips pursed. "He..." she coughed, "... he believes that it has been... oversalted for these last few days. He... ahem..." she trailed off, clearly trying not to speak ill of him. She said nothing at all, instead.

The chef was not so constrained. "Foolish," he declared, in an extravagant gesture. "No salt, no flavour! And it means that salted meat is off the table... ah, the fancy nobility might not like to hear it spoken of, but how many of their glazes, of their toppings, of their _garnishings_ need the hint of salt for the flavours to work! It is _impossible_! It is an outrage! And..."

"Beg pardon, sir," said the scullery girl, "but if he's the one'se not happy, why not just make'em a separate one?"

"Aha! Excellency itself! My sweet, all is forgiven! Return to your duties, over by the pans," he ordered, giving her a friendly pat on the bottom, making her squeak and giggle.

Miss Loungeville rolled her eyes. "His orders explicitly state that 'no flavourings or salt are to be used'. He wants everyone to have plain, unflavoured food tomorrow."

"Well, then it is madness!"

"Madness?" The woman shrugged. "Perhaps. But this is the Tristain Academy of Magic, and he is the headmaster."

The man slumped, deflating. "Fine," he grunted. "Get out, then, while I call for the others to see how we'll do this."

The woman smiled faintly as she left.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The suns were high in the sky, green and gold together shining straight down into the crater-like arena, providing no shade at all. The heat was enough to veil everything apart from the area around her, but she knew about the onlookers, because the roar of the crowd was a physical force beating at the ears and mind. And then there were the... the lizards-bird things, much larger than a man, but dressed in... in what looked like jewellery, over their brilliant green plumage and patches of over colours.

As she stared around, Louise gasped, as she realised that she wasn't wearing anything.

Actually, from an objective point of view, that wasn't quite true. She had a short leather kilt, which seemed to mostly serve as a place to hang the multiple brass icons, and there was also the bodypaint. Each hand was encased in wickedly bladed gauntlets, claw-like, made of something which looked like glass, but which, somehow, she knew was grown rather than cast. But this wasn't clothing! This was just... there. She was exposed, completely and utterly, like some kind of slattern!

And her opponent was before her, 'dressed' in the same way, although the other woman was painted in yellow, where she was daubed in green. Upon catching her eyes, her foe spread her arms wide, face raised to the skies, flagrantly flaunting her mostly-unclad form to the heavens and the crowd. Which, Louise realised with a shriek, as she squinted through the haze, was composed of the same lizard-creatures.

Somewhere, a gong sounded, and the other woman... if that was the right word, as Louise was pretty sure that she was about the same age, even if she was built more like Kirche, began to circle her, rhythmically clashing her crystal claw-gauntlets together in a way which made the air hum with the resonance.

"What's going on?" the pink-haired girl yelled, moving not so much as to guard from any attack, as to cover herself.

The only response her foe gave was to lunge forwards, towards her throat.

And Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière opened her eyes with a yell, sitting bolt upright. And then gasped again as her back protested at the aggravation of the mostly-healed wound. She moved, reflexively, to wipe her brow, only to find it desert-dry. She gazed around with sleep-bleary eyes, around the white-walled infirmary, and out into the spring dawnlight. No burning heat, no twin suns beating down upon the world.

The girl let her head slump down into her arms, and groaned.

"Huh? Wuzzat? Someting heppn'ing?" Montomorency on the bed opposite to her groaned, blinking awake with slurred words. "Some'ne screm?"

"No! Of course not!"

"_You did, my fair lady. I was quite in awe at the sheer majesty of the potency of your lungs,_" Marisalon said, calmly.

'Shut up,' was her thought response, as she tried to parried the aggrieved remarks from the blonde, who didn't much appreciate being woken up. Couldn't she get a proper night of sleep? It was getting to the stage that if she couldn't have a dreamless night's sleep, she would prefer not to sleep at all. Well, at least she hadn't been sick in the night, Louise thought, with no small amount of happiness. Maybe the dreams would go if she was getting better. Although...

'Marisalon, what do you know about nightmares?' she asked.

Mentally, she felt the neomah shift. "_What kind?_" it asked idly. "_The kind you get if you get caught out in the Typhon of Nightmares? Or the kind when you're bound under certain plates? Or the kind __where you're in the middle of the City, and you suddenly realise that it's gone all quiet and the musical instruments aren't playing and you can see a sort of reddish hint in the wind? Or..._"

Louise furrowed her brow. Interesting. It seemed that the neomah didn't know what happened when she dreamed. A spark flared in her soul. No, she wasn't going to say anything about it. It was enough that it was always in her head watching what she did and... and perving on her classmates and being annoyingly smug and generally just very annoying in a vaguely helpful, but still annoying way. She was going to keep her dream her own, even if they were nightmares of nakedness and being attacked.

At least it wasn't that recurring one, the one that she had had since she was very small, where she never ever got magic and was sent by her parents as a failure to live with the peasants on their estate, and even they mocked her for it. Compared to that one, a little bit of nakedness and a woman trying to kill her was nothing.

Reaching for her bedside table, Louise took a deep gulp of water. It was nice that for the first day in a while, she wasn't waking up with the taste of sick in her mouth. Maybe she was on the mend, which meant...

"_Fair lady, it is time to talk about your progress towards finding your way to Paragon. To such a delightful place, you must bring the worship of the true rulers of Creation, so that all may revel in the glory of those who crafted the world._"

... that Marisalon was going to start nagging her. It was getting _annoying_, because no-matter how many times she told the... the damn perverted head-thing that she had no idea where Paragon was, it just wouldn't listen! She'd even got one of the healers to fetch one of the books she knew had a map of the world in, but the neomah had the cheek to complain of the 'lack of greater context', and then ask her if she knew where the realm was, relative to where she was located!

Argh! She had carefully explained to the thing that there were lots of realms around here, and even explained the difference between the Brimiric nations, Germania, and the lands of the elves and other barbarians to the east. And all that had produced was a claim that wherever she was, she was somewhere in the west, which was _obvious_looking at the map.

And she had had enough, and couldn't face another day of it.  
'I don't care!' Louise mentally snapped. 'I have no idea where Paragon is, and... I don't care! I'm staying in bed until I feel better, rather than running off after a place I've never even heard of! Why should I care about it! No way!'

And then she felt it. A slight mental weight, a presence within her skull that smelt of cinnamon and lilies and the hot scent of baked earth, and felt like sand between her fingers. It was gone, yes, gone within a second, but she shivered in the unreal breeze, at the increase in pressure within her mind.

Marisalon sounded just as smiling, just as flirtatious, as usual. " _Take over Paragon, and use it as a centre for spreading the worship of the Yozis across the South, my fair lady. That is your task and your role. Perhaps you could go to the library, and ask the librarian. You will find out everything about the city. I believe you can do it, for nothing is outside your talents._"

Curling into a ball, the girl only stuck her head under the covers, trying to escape the pleasant voice in her head. This was going to be a hard day indeed.

* * *

{0}


	7. 6: Ignis Sacri

**A G****reen Sun Illuminates The Void**

**Chapter 6: Ignis Sacri**

* * *

{0}

* * *

The evening sky was heavy-lit by red, streaming in through the narrow west-facing windows of the cramped room. The door was securely bolted and fastened; the desk was cleared apart from a few, disorganised components in an alchemy kit. Apart from that, the sparse decorations were almost painfully neat and tidy, the kind of precision that speaks of having little to waste.

The woman in the room frowned, and adjusted the lacing on her left bracer, loosening it and flexing her wrist. Evidently, it was to her satisfaction, because she smiled, and checked herself in the cheap mirror as she stretched out. Her bandoleer, seven pouches of varying sizes, went on next, the weighted jars sitting heavy and full, and then came the cloak.

And up went the hood.

... showtime.

* * *

{0}

* * *

With a twitch, the charcoal snapped in Colbert's hand. It was the only mark of his irritation, but it was enough that any of his colleagues would have been rather surprised by the almost palpable heat radiating off the fire mage.

His theory had been perfect! He has been so sure that he had worked out what had happened to Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière! _Clearly_, what had happened was that the magical binding had been ruined by that first summoning, interrupted through sheer accidental bad luck. He had gone to check the crane with the broken-wings caught in the explosion, so sure that he would find that she had actually bound it as her familiar.

He hadn't just been wrong. That would have been much easier to handle; after all, there was no precedent that you could just bind random animals that flew into your circle. But there were... scars on its ruined wings. Burn-like scars, which looked a little bit like the text on the strange shell of brass and fire which had imprisoned Miss de la Vallière for five days; incomplete lettering in the form of curves and lines. Apparently, they had appeared overnight, during the hours of darkness, on the first day that the crane had been with them.

And he had talked to the water mage that handled the animals around the Academy. That it was still alive was surprising. The bird's wings _weren't_ healing. The animal seemed to be in pain, but it wasn't getting any sicker, and the break wasn't getting infected. In fact, the commoner groundsmen had claimed that it seemed to be, in some indefinable way, _better _than it had been, which was surely rubbish.

So they had tried to put it out of its misery, because it was cruel to let such a beautiful bird suffer in such a way.

It hadn't died. Even when they had snapped its neck.

The bones there had just knitted themselves back together, even as the broken-winged crane remained unhealing. And that didn't make any sense at _all_. Because it wasn't a familiar. He had visited Miss de la Vallière during the day, in her bed in the infirmary, and she hadn't been able to see through its eyes, hadn't shown any control over it, hadn't... done anything which would imply that it had been bound to her. Colbert was annoyed, because reality hadn't had the common decency to give him a nice binary answer to his conundrum.

Annoyed, and also intrigued. Familiars were branded, yes, but not in this way, not with so many words, and certainly not in what appeared to be the predecessor alphabet to ancient Brimiric runes. And that apparently the broken-winged crane was now undying... that was just _unexpected_.

... what would happen if he could, next year, get another student to mess up their first attempt at the ritual, he thought, before shaking his head. No. Forcing that kind of magical accident, in the most important day of the student's life, was immoral.

He'd feel better after dinner. Then he could get back to processing and copying the text from the book using his colbertotype.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Arriving late, together the asymmetrical pair of Kirche and Tabitha made their way to their customary seats. One could indeed wonder why the two of them were friends, for they were apparently polar opposites in every single way. One was tall, overdeveloped for her age, red-headed and dark-skinned, all too typical of the Germanian nobility, descended from eastern horseback tribes. The other was petite and childish in form, ghost-pale, her descent from _Les Lignées Triomphante_ written in her blue hair and in her features.

Nevertheless, to the confusion of others, they were still close enough that Tabitha could drag Kirche out to the forest close to the school, to help care for her wind-dragon, and feed it the meat that was such an important part of the creature's diet. Indeed, in the time since the summoning, Sylphid, the dragon, had grown rather fond of Kirche, not least because the fire mage was willing to sear her chunks of cow to a juicy medium rare.

And that was the reason for the lateness. Not the trip to the forest; no, that had been planned for. But the fact that Sylphid had decided to give Kirche a big lick, which had left her clothes and hair soaked in dragon-drool and cow-blood, meant that she had been in a state which was _completely_ unacceptable to turn up to dinner, and so a hurried wash and change had been necessary.

By that point, Kirche von Zerbst had built up a healthy appetite, both from the lateness of the hour, and the fact that searing steaks for a dragon made one's mouth water. And so she was somewhat surprised, and somewhat aggravated, when her blue-haired friend stabbed her in the hand with her fork, after only taking a single bite herself, and spitting it immediately out.

"What was that for?" the red-head hissed, trying not to make a scene.

"It'll heal."

Kirche spluttered a bit. "Well, yes, but that's not the point! It hurt! Argh!"

"Stopped you eating."

"It certainly will!" The redhead fumbled for a napkin, dabbing at the puncture wounds. "It... it didn't go deep, but... argh! It hurt!" An angry glare was directed at the pale girl. "What did you do that for?"

"Stop you eating."

"I know, you said that, but..." Something clicked inside Kirche's head, and she looked up, eyes suddenly alert. "What's the problem with the food?"

"Nothing. Under-flavoured. Warning sign."

The darker-skinned girl tilted her head. "... is that it?" she asked. "I can understand that you might be... cautious about over-flavoured food, because it might be hiding poison, but underfl..."

"Poisoning method." One finger was pointed at the salt shaker, and tracked over the other condiments. "Add your own. Avoids food tasters. Used in Romalia..." she paused for second, "and Galia."

Kirche's gaze darted around the room, from person to person. Everyone in here was a target, and she wasn't sure who in particular might attract an attempt like this. The buzz of conversation was a distraction, as she tried to consider who here might be a target for this kind of assassination attempt.

Apart from herself, obviously.

"Maybe we should tell someone?" she suggested, eyes still tracking.

There was no response from the blue-haired girl.

"You know. Because we don't want to get everyone poisoned," Kirche continued.

"No point." The tone was ice-cold, clipped, and soft, almost inaudible in the sound of the other students eating.

Fingers drummed on the table, Kirche casting a hungry glance down at her plate, before looking back at her friend. "Why?" she demanded.

The other girl paused for a long while. "Because it will tell the poisoner?" she said... no, Kirche was pretty sure that was a 'suggested'. It was an entirely uncharacteristic hint of uncertainty from the wind mage, and, in fact, she was fairly sure that the other girl was lying. But she chose to accept it for now.

"So now what?"

"Find poisoner. Eliminate."

Two eyebrows were raised. "Kill?" the Germanian asked, her surprise evident.

"Eliminate. Kill or recruit. No difference."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Down in the kitchens, Siesta smirked. She had stayed up all night, sneaking in for another shift in the kitchens when they were almost empty, and she had made good use of the herbs and plants that she had stolen from the arboretum. Tucked inside her breast pocket, she had the honey-and-herb mix, sealed with wax. Some of those plants had been _nasty_; she had blotches on her hands where the sap had burned at her skin just when she had been making the mixture, and she was only thankful that she had worn gloves when picking them. She was a little concerned that this might cause problems, but with sufficient honey, and telling the anathema that the healers had told her to drink it, it should probably work. No-one expected medicine to taste nice, after all.

And she was ready. Her duty was almost ready.

Yes. All she had to do was get assigned to the dinner delivery to the infirmary, and then put... the... fuzzy... woozy...

Thud.

Gloing.

Sploosh.

Siesta lay unconscious on the floor, covered in soup. And around her, the rest of the serving staff in the antechamber had similarly collapsed.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The thuds and clattering had by now stopped.

"Huh," Kirche remarked, her eyes wide open, as she looked around the dining room, filled with snoring nobles. "So... everyone?"

The blue-haired girl nodded, her hand shooting out to grab one of the salt shakers. A cascade of whitish powder fell out of the top, the consistency completely wrong for what it was meant to be. Tabitha sniffed at it, smelling nothing, before she tasted a tiny amount on her little finger, spitting immediately onto the table. "Rose," she said. "Twilight Sip. Knocks out, also paralyses. Assassins use on guards. Can stop breathing, but fairly safe." The side of her mouth twitched. "Still, water mages will be busy. Causes lung problems, also issues with kidneys and heart if dose too large."

"So... wait, the salt was..."

The air-mage scanned over the entire table. "Not just salt. Pepper too. Probably everything. Maybe in food too, will not test it. Also wine." she remarked, clinically. "Mass transmutation of sedative into other forms. Limited duration, return to normal all at same time, when already eaten." She glanced over at the nearest of the serving staff, lying unmoving amongst the remains of the plates that they had been carrying. "And them too. Not sure how that happened."

Kirche slumped down. "That's clever," she whispered. "And if it had been... you know, something deadly?"

"Death." The blue-haired girl leaned over, and pushed Malicorne's face out of his bowl of soup, where he had been blowing bubbles in a rather disturbing manner which suggested that he had probably been drowning. "Stop people dying in soup, then blow out candles," she instructed.

"Why... ah, fire risk." Kirche von Zerbst pulled herself upright, drew her wand, and with a quick slash, extinguished all the fire in the room.

There was a pause.

"Can't see," Tabitha remarked, in the darkness.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Montmorency was not talking to Louise anymore. Louise was not talking to Montmorency anymore.

All in all, this was probably a considerable improvement in the general state of affairs, which meant that the social combativeness of the room had gone down considerable, and the occasional sullen glare was more than fair payment for blessed silence. The fact that the chief healer, the Abbe, had informed them before he went to dinner that, if they did not both shut up, he would be putting them in with the sick first years, and if they caught pentapox it was God's will, may have had something to do with this truce.

"_... and then, what of Gem? What of Gem the Doomed, built into a dead volcano born of fire, the caves below it filled with __**deliciously**__ flammable firedust? What of Gem, which somehow has decided to get in a trade war with Paragon, despite the fact that the two cities are over a thousand miles away from one another? Indeed, let us not speak of Gem, for it is a silly place. Silly, and doomed. It is not your mandate, although it is likely you will have to liaise with whichever of the Princes will be assigned there, for the South is the domain of the Endless Desert, and such efforts will have to be coordinated._"

Sadly, the priest had not known of the neomah in Louise's head, and so it had not been told to shut up. And even if he had known about it, he would not have been able to make it be quiet, so it was probably for the best. At the moment, Louise had managed to channel it into telling her about the lands of the south, rather than nagging her. She had always been a little curious of what lay below the lands the elves controlled, and now... well, she couldn't quite trust anything it said, because some of it sounded rather unbelievable, but it was entertaining in a way, and at least it wasn't going on and on about other things. Or trying to get her to do... Louise blushed... slatternly things with Montmorency.

At least those bits weren't as bad as when it started talking about what the neomah did when they weren't being... you know, annoying head-familiars. She wasn't sure whether it was actually telling the truth about those bits, but she had been blushing hard enough that the healers had noted that she had a temperature and was flushed, and given her something to cool her down.

Unbeknownst to either girl, the water in their glasses shifted slightly.

And then, about a second later, it shifted again, but the motion was larger this time.

Louise stretched out to her full not-very-long length, running her hands through her hair. She... well, huh. Her hair wasn't greasy at all, despite the fact that she hadn't had it washed since right after the fight. It was a little dry-feeling, but otherwise in perfect condition.

The water in the glasses rippled again.

'Marisalon,' Louise asked, mentally. 'Should my hair be like this? It's... odd.'

There was a pause from the neomah. "_I didn't have hair, fair lady_," the demon remarked. "_I am afraid I cannot be of much assistance... although I can, of course, give you grooming tips. One of my former mistresses had me care for her _intimately_, and so I know how ladies of the Realm dress themselves and care for their hair._"

A ripple, larger once more.

The corners of the girl's mouth twitched upwards. That actually sounded tolerable, and... well, maybe it might be useful. Maybe she should have a shopping expedition someday soonish. Yes. She could treat herself. She'd earned it, after all.

Over on the other side of the room, Montmorency sat upright, with a groan, and stared at her glass of water. Regularly, perhaps two seconds apart, the surface of the water would leap, rippling and bouncing off the inner walls. Squinting, she peered at it, looking to see if there was an insect or something in the glass. There wasn't. And she wasn't using magic, and she doubted that there was another water mage that close. She'd notice. But there was certainly something making it move.

As if something... was... shaking... it...

And that was just about when Montmorency noticed the twenty-metre tall golem, walking directly towards the window. And, unsurprisingly screamed.

This served to alert Louise, who followed the other girl's gaze.

She also screamed. The golem was a walking behemoth, large enough to almost completely block out the view from the window already.

It also didn't appear to be stopping.

The next few seconds were what might be deemed to be 'confused'.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Flat, sensible shoes clicking against the stone floor, followed by the clatter of the mass of lesser constructs that followed her, the notorious mage-thief, Foquet, named by some "The Crumbling Dirt" made her way through the corridors of the Tristain Academy of Magic.

To the profligate and decadent members of the upper nobility, she was a terror, the thief who came in the night and who not only stole the gems from one's summer home, but also who stole the glit of the decorations, animating the metal to dance away into the darkness. To the middle nobility, she was whispered rumour and bragging rights alike; to be targeted by her was proof that one was – or rather, had been – wealthy, even as others denied the weakness that she bought. And for the commoners and the poorest among the so-called _inexprimé_houses, she was a source of schadenfreude; almost a lesser folk hero, from the way that she humiliated their betters. She stole precious gems and deeds to land alike, and was known to be a discerning connoisseur of enchanted goods.

To no-one's surprise, there was a price on her head in all four of the Brimiric nations, and the Emperor-elect of Germania had publicly sworn that whosoever that bastard of an earth mage was, he would have his balls hanging from his saddle-horn.

That had provided no small amusement to the decidedly female Foquet. It had made all the careful and painstaking androgyny of her costume and public image worth it, in a very real sense.

But then again, she had always had a taste for the dramatic. And her full education in the finest examples of the thespian arts, Brimiric and otherwise, served her well.

Take the golem outside, for example. It was a contingency, nothing more. If all went as planned, they would be chasing the mage who used the giant golem... and she had set up several robberies in the past year, to establish that as a modus operandi. But if things did not go well, it was still a giant golem she could use to escape in. And in some cases, brute force was... useful.

She was going in through the inside of the King's Tower. The golem was attacking from the outside. She would be interested in seeing who got to the soft, tasty centre first.

And, of course, _everyone_knew that mages had to keep a close eye on a golem that size. Foquet smiled, under her disguise. If anyone had escaped her sedatives, their reactions to the golem would be... interesting.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Barely breathing heavily, Louise dropped Montmorency none-too-gently on the roof, and stared at the golem, which had just walked through the building. She coughed once, twice, in the dust kicked up by the destruction that the golem had inflicted, and continued to stare.

Kneeling by her feet, the blonde girl was hyperventilating, bandaged arm clutched up against her chest. "There is a giant golem thing that just walked through the building!" she hissed at Louise, once she was approaching the ability to string a coherent sentence together. "_Why _is there a giant golem thing!"

"I have no clue!" Louise hissed back.

"Giant! Golem!"

"I know!"

"What is it doing here!"

"I don't know!"

There was silence, as they glared at each other. Monmon relented first, looking away, down to her arm. "How did you manage to do that?" she asked, a hint of curiosity mixed with the anger in her voice. "And... and what are we doing on the roof?"

Louise paused. What were they doing on the roof? Well, yes, she sort of had picked up Montmorency and most of her bedding and carried her in one arm up here, but... why had she done that?

Not that she wanted the other girl to die. No, what she didn't know was why she'd carried her up to the roof, and... she turned around, to stare at the door, which was lying on the roof. Yes, why she'd kicked down the door along the way. How had she even done that? It had felt so natural, so _right_ to be acting with overwhelming force.

"_Fair lady, that was __most__ impressive indeed._"

"Why am I on the roof?"

"_That was all your doing, my Princess. I didn't say anything._" The neomah coughed. "_And we would probably have been safer not going to the roof of the building which the construct had just walked through, though of course I defer to your superior wisdom. Is it a warstrider, or is it simpler than that?_"

"... yes, that is what I asked you, Zero." The blonde sighed, which turned into a pained cough. "So you don't know."

Louise puffed up her chest. "Oh, s-so sorry I saved your life!" she retorted. "Clearly, I should have thought up a better path while the giant golem was smashing th-through the place!"

And that did shut up Montmorency, at least for a little bit. Crouching low, the two girls watched the golem tear apart the well-kept grass with its spurred feet, heading inexorably towards the main tower.

"You know, I _bet _it's Foquet of the Crumbling Dirt!" Louise whispered, staring at the behemoth. "Attacking the Academy with a giant golem... who else could it be?"

"... an attempt by Albionese Republicans to take the treasures of Tristain and use them for their own nefarious ends!"

"What?"

"Well, we've always been allies with Albion," Monmon said, lips twisting. "Maybe they think it's okay... or they'll plant evidence to make it look like the Royalists! Or the Royalists are doing it to make us think that it was the Republicans who tried to make it look like the Royalists, so we'll interfere with the war on their side!"

Louise blinked. And then she remembered. "Oh. You're still on lots of painkillers, aren't you?"

The blonde squinted. "Um... so I am." There was a cough. "I _wonder _why?" There was a glare directed at Louise to go with those words.

The pink-haired girl massaged the back of her neck. This didn't really seem like the time for acrimony. "Look... I wasn't _trying_ to... um... hurt you like this. I mean it was a duel, yes, but I sort of snapped. And... I only did it after you _stabbed me_."

Well, maybe a bit of acrimony.

Montmorency puffed herself up... and then deflated slightly. "You wouldn't stop moving, and I was on the edge of collapsing," she muttered, in what resembled an admission. "I'm only a line mage, and I want to do alchemy when I'm older. I'm not a fighter. I can't keep going."

There was silence again, but a more pleasant one, the air between the two girls cleared slightly. A silence which was broken, at least for Louise, by the shriek within her head.

"_My lady..._" began Marisalon, voice fearful and shrill. "_W-w-why are there two moons?_"

"Huh?" muttered Louise, as, crouched down, she half-crawled along the roof of the academy, trying to keep low. She had no idea how on earth the golem saw, but keeping small and unobtrusive was probably a good idea. She glanced up at the sky. Taksony was just rising over the buildings, to join his sister moon. They were both nearly full, casting their red and blue light down upon the earth. Yes. Two moons.

"_Two. Moons._" A mental intake of breath. "_What is going on here!_" the neomah shrieked.

A grunt of effort, as Louise pulled herself up a ledge, muscles aching from the exertion. "That's how many moons there are," Louise said through gritted teeth. She went to wipe her brow, only to find it dry. And, thinking about how she felt, she didn't feel sweaty at all, even if she knew that this much exercise _should_have left her her drenched.

"_Nuh uh. Where am I! Where am I! This is not the inchoate depths of formless chaos, nor is it the terrible necrotic wastelands of the Underworld... this place feels real and proper, but... argh!_"

Louise couldn't help but smirk at the self-righteous, annoying, promiscuous, degenerate thing's terror. "There are two moons," she suggested again, trying to distract herself away from the giant scary golem in the courtyard. "That's how moons work."

The neomah sounded terrified. "_No! There is one moon! In Creation, it is the traitor Luna! In the City, it is the Unquestionable Ululaya, the Blood-Red Moon! Only ever one!_"

Louise sniffed. "That's a bit stupid," she remarked, looking away from the golem, to stare up at the twin moons. "How would the tides work if you only had one moon?"

"_By the will of gen-generous Kimbery, the Sea that Mar-Mar-Marched against the Flame_," Marisalon said, promptly, tripping over her words. "_Or by the traitor gods who prostrate themselves and follow monstrous Luna's path through the skies of Creation. How do yours work?_"

The girl screwed up her face. 'Just shut up and let me pay attention to the golem,' she mentally commanded. It wasn't because she wasn't exactly sure herself, and as far as she knew, it was just something to do with the moons, no. Not at all. "I'm not going to talk to you about cosmology." She cleared her throat. "That's... that's the King's Tower the golem is going for," she continued, talking to the blonde.

Behind her, Montmorency's eyes were wide, as she caught about half of Louise's conversation. "Um. Yes."

That the Zero had started talking to herself, and, worse, seemed to actually be having a conversation, rather than muttering... well, she really hoped that this meant that Louise had actually summoned something which was invisible, or too small to see. Or had picked up an unseen spirit which was following her around, in which case they'd want to call a trained exorcist from the nearest monastery.

Because... um, she didn't actually know what it would mean otherwise. After all, crazy people didn't have proper conversations. Not like that one. And...

... her chain of thought was broken, as the titanic fist of the golem came smashing down against the tower wall, and the counter-magic lit up the night. The heat washed over both girls, a burning wave that left the water mage gasping for air. The golem hit again, and again, and each time, a new ignition of magic lit the night, random arcs of lightning and wind and fire splashing off the golem. Cowering, the blonde saw a jet of flame the size of a playing field wash over the roof somewhere along, leaving the slate glowing. She rolled over, and saw Louise standing upright, a strange green glint in her eyes, shining in the night, which seemed... wrong compared to the red and actinic white of the fire and lightning.

The other girl's lips were moving, muttering to herself again. And her pink eyes were suddenly wide. "We have to move!" she screamed down at Montmorency. "She says that patterns are..."

"What!"

And Monmon felt another thing slam into her, which this time was Louise, the petite girl brining her shoulder into her, and together they fell, down into the room below, as the entire roof gave way.

"'Svoid!" yelled the well-bred scion of the Montmorencys, once she felt she could breathe again, dots flashing in front of her eyes.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The redhead flinched, as behind her, the night lit up in red and white. A few seconds later, the thunderous crack of the magical force echoed around.

"What's... what's going on?" Kirche asked Tabitha, who was running ahead of her, and annoyingly, didn't seem to be out of breath at all. Of course, the blue-haired girl didn't... she winced... wasn't suffering from inconvenient bouncing. This was a school, Founder and East Winds damnit! If she'd expected to be doing this sort of thing, she would have bound her breasts this morning! The boys might drool over them – although she did try to discourage them from doing that literally, because it was disgusting – but none of _them _had to put up with the hassle.

"Magic. Discharge, high-power defence systems," Tabitha replied, in a way which would have been terse and clipped if that wasn't how she spoke normally. "School built on ley lines, access to more power for magic."

"I'll say! I couldn't..."

"Talk less. Run more," the blue-haired girl ordered, as they sprinted towards the forest.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The door bounced like a ball as it flew off its hinges, and incinerated itself in a ball of fire, as it set off several traps.

With a few soft steps, the thief was within the chamber itself. Looking up, in the glow of the magical light, the tall arched ceilings of marble were perfectly smooth, and beautiful, unmarred by the excess paintings which were so common in the rest of the Academy. The androgynous figure cocked its head slightly, and waved their wand in gloved hand. From behind them, a swarm of crude, doll-like clay figurines surged in, the amateur work of an unpractised dot-class magician.

There were hundreds of them.

Or, to be more exact, there had been hundreds of them, just up until the point that the first wave hit the traps, and were torn apart.

Foquet coughed once, as the air, which tasted of ozone and superheated ceramics, wafted out of the entrance way. Quite carefully, the mage took a step forwards, and placed their foot on one of the tiles, making sure that the pressure-sensitive plate clicked. And then took another, quiet deliberate step, making sure that there was the click, before the next step was taken.

It was slow going. There may have been enough books to find the optimal route through the maze of traps and wards, but there was no convenient 'off' switch to the defences. It would be been lovely if there had been one, but from all the research done, there had seemed to be no other way. At this point, there was a strong suspicion that the only reason they hadn't recharged yet was that most of the magical power in the structure was trying to ward off the assault of her golem.

One of the advantages of planning ahead, Foquet thought with a secret smirk.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Argh! Mars' blood," yelled Louise, shaking out her hand. "That hurt! A roof shouldn't hurt _my _hand when I break through it!"

"_Much as I hate to request things of you, fair lady..._"

"... urgh. And my back hurts! Am I getting old or something!"

"_... most graciously I do believe that we need to work on your unarmed fighting skills. You need to learn how to fight without weapons._"

"I am perfectly well educated in fighting, thank you very much. I..." Louise dropped to her knees again, back down onto the boxes of spare bedding which it turned out that the Academy kept in its attic. "Argh! It hurts!"

"... you just punched through the roof," Monmon muttered, staring up at her from the depths of a pillow-filled box, with her own groans. She added, acerbically, "And apparently landed head first. You're spouting gibberish... not that that's that unusual for you, of course."

"Not funny, Flood," Louise grated out. "My hand, it..."

The blonde managed to leaver herself out of the soft bedding, rolling out onto the dusty wooden floor. Wand in hand, she poked at Louise's fist, already swelling, and winced. "Bruises, and I think there might be a fracture," she added, as the other girl yelped at the touch to one area. Shaking her head, she looked upwards, at the hole in the roof. "How did you even do that?" she asked, curiously, as thunder boomed from another lightning bolt. "People can't punch through roofs."

There was a bitter giggle from Louise. "No, I think what we just found was that people aren't _meant_ to punch through roofs." She gasped, and clutched at her hand. "Void, it hurts!" she complained.

"Hold still, Zero, and don't squirm, or it'll just hurt more," Monmon said, grabbing her wrist, and bringing her fingers out before her. "Don't be a baby."

"Baby! I..."

"_My lady, she offers healing unprompted. Unless you should wish to suffer on, this might be one chance to let her have her ministrations._"

"... fair enough."

"_And also stare down her top, because... have you noticed how attractive she is when so fetchingly dishevelled like this?_"

Louise closed her eyes, rather than let the neomah win by getting her to stare. Especially since, she now realised, both of them were still in the loose pyjamas of the infirmary, rather than their uniforms. She just tried to breathe steadily, as the pain faded, becoming nothing more than an ache.

"There," she head Montmorency say. "I... I think I got the fracture... there's just a bit of bruising. It was only a tiny fracture. Um. If it was a fracture." She blinked. "So you were just making a fuss about nothing," she muttered softly. She did not say it loudly, because when the person you are dealing with just punched through a room, it's best not to be too argumentative. And also "... Louise?"

"Mmm?" she answered, pulling herself to her feet, and looking around.

"Is there something on your forehead?"

There was a slap, as Louise rubbed furiously. "Is it gone?" she asked. "What is it? Is it a bug?"

"Umm... I think so. I mean, I think it's gone, not that it was a bug. It... must have just been the light. It was glittery."

The two of them looked around the attic. It was a tall and drafty, the infrequent windows mostly blocked by the boxes and trunks, and

"Can you see any candles?"

No candles could be seen.

"_My fairest, and most majesterial of all the Princesses of the Green Sun,_" Marisalon said, her voice even richer and more obsequious than normal, "_there are things that can be done to resolve the darkness._"

"... no, I'm not going to set anything on fire," Louise muttered, alarming Monmon a little.

The neomah sounded smug. Smugger than usual, even. "_Ah, no, my fair lady. You are so, so close to the revelation of your glory. Merely...draw in the essence of your soul, and carefully release some. And, my lady. I have been thinking, and I find myself not-liking the conclusions If... if you have two moons, then you are not of Creation. What then! What then! What then! I... don't what to do! I... ah, that would be why you knew not of Paragon. But then... nothing... no sense... argh._"

The girl squinted, and ignored the coadjustor's panic attack, following the initial advice. She bit her lower lip, as she worked through mental muscles she never knew she had.

And there was light.

"Louise..." breathed Montmorency, eyes wide. "You're _glowing_."

The pink-haired girl glanced down at her hands which revealed, that, yes, a slightly-sickly green radiance was wrapped around her hands, burning like cold fire across her clothes and skin. "Uh... yes, of course! It's all to do with my magic!" she retorted, after a moment's pause.

The blonde stared at the other girl, at the unnatural light which illuminated the attic like a torch, and the way that it seemed to cast no shadows. And in the centre of the forehead of her forehead, an X-shaped cross, burned the colour of brass, flecked with the ever-present viridian.

"What kind of magic does _that_?" she managed, panting, as the pounding rhythm of the golem's fists against the warded tower resounded, again and again, like some vast drum.

Louise blinked. "Um... I don't think I have a normal element," she said, with sudden hesitancy. "I think I found a new element... why I've always had problems with magic before. Vitriol, maybe."

"_Acid_! Really?"

"What do you know..."

"Of course I know it! I'm an alchemist and potion-maker, aren't I? You can get it from mixing a few reagents. But I've always been told that it's merely the Fire within Earth, not an element in its own right!"

"I don't think now is the time for arguments about elemental theory," Louise blurted out. She took a deep breath. "Look, can you see any teachers?" she asked, going over to one of the windows, and with a single blow with a curtain hook she had just picked up, smashed the lock off.

Huh. She glanced at the curtain-hook in her hand, a two-and-a-half metre long piece of iron-capped oak, a spike at the end. Certainly, right now for some reason she felt _much_ more comfortable with this in her hand than her wand. Tabitha carried around a heavy staff, rather than a wand, after all, and Louise could suddenly see why a heavy lump of wood was something much more... concrete than magic. For one, even if you'd depleted yourself of willpower, you could still beat them senseless.

Wait, why was she thinking this?

Wreathed in green fire Louise sighed at her own distraction, and poked her head out of the ruined window, before the blonde grabbed her by the collar, and yanked her back down.

"Do you want to be seen?" hissed Montmorency. "Or hurt your hand again?"

She was targeted by a level gaze. "I'm on _fire_. Cold, not-burning, green fire. I think I can't really hide like this. And... look," Louise pulled the other girl's head up with sudden force, "no mage. It's a massive golem, and that means that the caster has to work hard to keep it going. That means it won't be that bright. Can you see who's guiding it?"

There was always a compromise between potency and initiative in golems; everyone was aware of that simple fact. Even commoners.

"Now that you mention it... no. Because it's a massive golem thing!"

"Well... can't you... like, freeze the floor under it. I mean, that'd be far more useful right now that, say, _stabbing it with an ice spear_," Louise hissed, still feeling rather bitter about that.

Monmon went pale. "And have it fall on us? Or the school? We're already in lots and lots of trouble, remember! And," she added, with a trace more self-control, "it's far too big for it to slip like that. It'd just... just break the ice."

"Well, we can't stay in here! We're going to have to stop it!"

"... we aren't? And we have to?"

"Look we're already both in trouble from your... from the fight," Louise corrected herself, as the other girl narrowed her eyes. "Is there any better way you can see to show that we're not bad? Because..." she balled her fists, "... I am not going to be expelled! Ever! I... I will never have to face M-M-Mother after that happened! I-I-I'd rather die than... than have to face her..."

'And,' she thought, as they began to search, now-lit in green that did not cast shadows, 'you're going to explain everything about this glow, you stupid head familiar! Why didn't you tell me about this glow thing earlier!"

No response from the neomah.

* * *

{0}

* * *

And here it was. The inner sanctum. Ancient prizes, dating back to the era of Birmir and before, reaching all the way back into ancient history when – or so the Church held – God had sent the Founder to bring the world into being. Sigsimundshelm, the Iron Rose, the battleflag of the Eastmadchen... all of them were here. There were other, newer things, such as the Staff of Destruction, and the Thirteen Teethed Wheels, which, even in this light, gleamed prismatic in their reflections. And, of course, relics taken as war trophies from the terribly few victories against the elves who occupied the Holy Land in the depths of their inhuman blasphemy, which were naturally completely different. Although no less valuable.

Oh, and some gold, too. Quite a lot of it.

Foquet breathed out, and steeped her fingered together, gathering her strength. Around her, lesser golems crumbled back into the dirt they had been crafted from, before she inhaled sharply, and began to chant out lout, forcing her will into reality through complex interlocking syllables. The dust began to roll across the ground, swirling, twisting, mixing, as the gold and silver dripped off the ornaments and pooled with the dirt, alloying and mixing in one sea of metal that was at once liquid and solid.

Her new constructs began to form.

And then it was done. The cloaked figure stumbled, slumping down, almost utterly drained. So much of her will was occupied with maintaining the army she was trying to control that she had very little left for herself. But it was going to be only a little bit longer, and she could have pulled off the heist of... the century. At least.

The horde of gold golems began to loot the treasury, en masse.

This was a once in a lifetime chance for her, and she certainly wasn't going to waste it.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Both girls stared at the now-immobile golem. It had just... stopped moving a few minutes ago.

"Do you think the spells killed it?" Montmorency whispered, as if by talking too loud she could stir it from slumber.

Louise focussed on it, doing again the thing she had worked out could be used to tell elemental affinity...

"_Insignificant Embers Intution, the technique is known as_," Marisalon said, her voice sounding hollow, as if she were operating completely on autopilot.

... and it wasn't there, to that hot glinty feeling behind her eyes. It was just cold, dead, mundane earth, completely below her, not even deserving the attention of a mort... that she'd give to a commoner. "It's not active," she said, softly.

"Oh? And how do you know that?"

Louise paused. "Glowy green magic," she said, pointing at her forehead, where the crossed-swords gleamed.

"... and I'm just not very happy to see you catch fire like this, Zero," Monmon muttered. "It's not... natural."

It was odd, Louise thought, as she stood on the roof, staring down at the immobile giant, leaning on the curtain hook like a staff. Being on green glowing fire and being able to punch through rooftops and casually smash apart doors was somehow a great comfort, and made the nickname of 'Zero' ring rather hollow.

Wait. That wasn't odd at all.

Although, talking about ringing hollow, inside her... there was a feeling of... it could only be described as 'hunger', but such a description was a poor one. Emptiness, perhaps. The feeling that she needed to... to rest and let the fire burn down, so she could get... yes... like she was a bonfire, and she needed to get more fuel.

Louise really wished she knew the words for this.

"_Anima banner. Light of your soul. Soul's too big for your body, so it overflows,_" the neomah said, without any of the usual flowery pleasantries.

Louise felt she could grow to like this traumatised, shell-shocked neomah. It had all the utility of the normal annoying one, but much less of the annoyingness. She herself would think about the idea that the head-familiar was from another world when there _wasn't_ a giant golem around, even if it did appear to be inactive right now. The girl hefted her borrowed curtain hook. It felt solid, but... no! She wasn't stupid enough to try to attack a giant earth golem with something made for closing hard-to-reach window coverings.

Twitching slightly, Louise clutched at her head. What was happening to her head? Objectively, she knew she should be _terrified _of that thing. As it was, she was... cautious. There were... there... in her head, there were half-heard susurrations of memories she had never had. And the voice didn't sound like Marisalon. She still asked it what was happening.

No response from the neomah.

Clutching the solid wood pole, resting it on her shoulder, the girl looked around, searching for a way down to the

She felt a hand clutch at her infirmary pyjamas, and turned. The blonde was tugging at her. "Shouldn't we hide from the massive golem?" Monmon suggested. "Rather than, you know, going down towards it?"

"I'm on fire! I can't really hide!" Louise muttered, grasping her improvised polearm tighter.

Montmonrency sniggered, in a burble with turned into a gasp of pain. "And whose fault is that?"

"Oh, very funny." A pause, and a deep breath. "Mother would do it. I... if I'd didn't, she would ask me why. And we're both nobles! If someone dares to steal from the Academy like this, we're honour-bound to try to stop them." And then she gasped, and threw herself down, trying to conceal herself to no avail. Because, lit in the green flare of her soul, from the entrance to the King's Tower came a parade of golden golems. The man-sized figures were laden down with... well, everything. Blades, paintings, long things wrapped in black velvet; the yellow-figures carried them what was undoubtedly almost uncounted wealth.

Also, the golems were, as best she could tell in the green light, made of gold. That increased their market value a fair bit.

The figure among them, robed and hooded and veiled until one could not even tell the gender of the individual – if they were even a human, as opposed to another golem – cocked its head, and paused. Obviously, they were somewhat perplexed by the green light everywhere, with no obvious source. That was one of the disadvantages of the fact that the light cast no shadows; it mean that solid walls didn't stop the illumination.

"Ladies, gentlemen," the cloaked figure announced to the skies, spreading their arms wide. "I would like you all to remember this as the day that you were honoured by the visit from Foquet! And with that, I bid you..."

"Thief!" Louise leapt to her feet, pointing, as next to her Montmorency groaned. "You're just a dirty thief! Put all those things down, and surrender!"

There was a pause. "I am not dirty," the figure said. "And I'm not a thief, either."

"You're lying! You just stole all that treasure!"

A glance, turning their head to stare at the golems made of stolen gold, carrying stolen paintings and stolen weapons and stolen jewels. And other things which had also been stolen. "No I didn't," Foquet said, voice dry despite the magically-enforced lack of identifying characteristics.

"Lying thief! Give it back."

"Louise," Monmon muttered, rolling her eyes. "I think she's winding you up."

The pink-haired girl snorted, and began to take the stairs down from the roof, two at a time. "Surrender!" she roared out, at the top of her voice.

Foquet only snorted. "Please, no violence," the figure said, clearly. "Just let me leave, and no-one has to get hurt." With a wave of a wand, the golden golems began to march out, bearing their misbegotten loot. As they left, Foquet turned, and bowed, theatrically, from the rear of the column. "And since you are here, I would just like to say that you will always remember this as the day that you _almost_ managed to almost manage to capture Foquet of the Crumbling Dirt!"

Her response came in the form of a thrown curtain hook, which scythed through the air, whistling slightly, in a carefully measured, infinitely well-drilled sweep that spoke of long years of practice, and no small amount of accuracy despite the improvised nature of the weapon. It would be no underestimatation to say that it was completely unexpected, and thus despite the fact that Louise was not the strongest of individuals, it was still enough to catch the hooded figure in the knees, and send her sprawling to the ground.

"How _dare_ you underestimate me, sorcerer!" Louise yelled, a sudden harshness in her voice. "Are you aware of whom you're dealing with?" Hands balled into fists, she broke into a charge, a green-lit comet crossing the field.

Foquet groaned, and a wave of a wand bought an earth wall up to send Louise face first into the dirt. Slowly, the dark-robed figure drew themselves up again, with a groan. "Scream and babble all you like, child, but you just made a mistake," the mage said, slowly, and began to chant.

"Little girl? Who are you to _dare_ to call _me_a little girl!" Louise roared, moving in to try to body-check the first golem who moved in to save its mistress. She bounced off, the crude manikin of dirt and gold and silver being rather denser and tougher than she expected, but came back to her feet upright again. "I am..." and then there was no time for talking, as more moved in.

Only to be blown away in a sudden hurricane, as something vast flapped overhead. Something passed in front of Dorika, obscuring her blue light, and came around again, as wind scythed through the ranks of the golems, tossing them like dolls. The pink-haired girl could only drop to the ground, clutching onto the nearest of the fallen treasures to prevent her from being blown away, if nothing else. Wincing, she opened her eyes with a groan, to find that she was now smeared in dirt and her hair looked like it had been pulled through a bush backwards, complete with twigs, but she was otherwise unharmed.

She squinted down at the black-velvet-wrapped treasure in her arms. It was long and thin, maybe two metres long, with the top thirty centimetres more heavily bound in fabric, and _heavy_. A tag on it labelled it "The Staff of Destruction". At that point, Louise swore that she would protect it with her life, on her honour as a noble. Even if... she grunted as she pulled it, and herself upright... Founder, what was it made of? Lead?

The concealed face of Foquet turned, to stare up at the wind dragon and its blue-haired rider. "You should be asleep, little girl," the androgynous voice said. "How were you able to avoid the sedative?"

Tabitha tilted her head. "Unimaginative," she said, simply.

"What?" The Earth-mage seemed offended. "It was novel! It was exquisitely planned! And even if you were immune, it affected everyone else! Hah! No matter, I can handle a..."

"Talk too much."

"What? How dare... argh!" The reason for the interruption was made clear as Foquet ignited. No bolt of fire lanced out, no projectile that could have been foreseen or counted. The thief, and a bubble several metres across around here, were merely suddenly the centre of a great bonfire, an orange conflagration which burned blue around the edges. In truth, for many present, the fiery light, intense though it was, was a welcome relief to the sick green bonfire which enveloped Louise.

Louise felt the wash of heat over her face, but the von Zerbst's control was astonishing, and she was no more than lightly sunburned by the sudden pulse of heat.

And standing on the walls to the academy, where Tabitha had placed her, Kirche slashed her wand to the side, panting mildly, and the bonfire vanished, leaving only the glowing red-hot crater on the floor. "Well," the redhead said, turning her gaze on the scene before her. "Hey, Zero! I never thought you'd manage to set yourself on fire like this!"

"Sh-shut up, Kirche!" was the answer roared back. "It's not burning fire! I'm f-fine!"

"Are you sure? Because creepy green-burning fire is sort of a sign of something having gone very wrong." She sniffed. "Of course, you did do a very good job of slowing Foquet down until some proper mages could arrive. And it was very scary! She'd managed to poison basically all the rest of the school!"

"Sedate," said Tabitha, now circling the static figure of the golem, eyes locked on the inanimate figure.

"What!"

"Sedate. Non-lethal. More precise. Confusion if say 'poison'."

There was a sigh from the darker-skinned girl. "Fine, fine. Yes, she knocked all of the others out. But why were you... oh, of course. You were in the infirmary, so you didn't eat the food," Kirche said, a note of self-satisfaction present in her voice. "So you got lucky, Zero."

"Luck?" asked Tabitha, softly, who was promptly ignored.

"Hey, I'm here too!" Monmon yelled from up on the roof, now that she felt that she could breathe again, pulling herself to her feet with shaky legs.

Kirche's eyes widened slightly. "Oh," she said, with a shrug. "Didn't see you there. Because, you know, you're not on fire. Freaky, green, not-actually-burning fire."

"It's my magic, von Zerbst! I... uh oh."

And the 'uh oh' was well founded, for with the shriek of breaking ceramics, the golem stirred back to life. Insofar as a blank-faced, crude manikin of earth and clay could look annoyed, it looked annoyed. Very annoyed.

* * *

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* * *

Ensconced within the hollow cavity of the golem's chest, Foquet was indeed annoyed. Her robes were heavily burnt, and only the native anti-Fire warding they had, in case of traps, meant that her injuries were only superficial. If she hadn't managed to retreat into the earth, and under the ground into her golem, or if her wards had been a little weaker, or... well, she would have been _ash_.

What kind of student could throw around that level of Fire magic?

Well, it was all her own fault. She'd got distracted by the glow and petty revenge because someone had thrown a stick at her, when, clearly, it had just been some kind of Fire-based illusion. It would be interesting to learn, but the real threats were the girl on the dragon, and the Fire mage on the walls. With a muttered spell, and the limited gestures she could manage in here – and she winced at the flickers of pain, from her burns – the surface of the golem budded pustule-like eyeballs, marring its crude simplicity.

The woman's eyes widened. Yes, she'd read the headmaster's files. Kirche von Zerbst had been her assailant. That would explain a lot. But she had her objectives, and she was safe now. The question was what she should do next.

Spreading her arms, she winced again, as limbs of clay protruded from the walls to envelop her arms and legs. The golem was not enough on its own, not when faced by hostile mages. So she was simply going to assume direct control of it. She wagged her fingers, and the hands of the golem moved in parallel, mimicking her every gesture. The woman lifted one arm, and the golem raised one arm.

Foquet bought the arm down on a building, the enchanted stone resisting better than it would otherwise, but the roof still caved in, kicking up choking dust. In the light of the twin moons and the green illumination from that distracting girl, dust devils could be seen to dance in the night, surely exulting in her triumph.

Ah, _yes._

"Let Act II begin," she declared, the golem amplifying her speech.

{0}

"Oh, this is not _fair_," Kirche yelled up from her position on the wall. "People aren't allowed to avoid your incineration like that! How did she even get in the golem?"

"Triangle class. Powerful," was the eternally helpful commentary from the girl on the dragon.

The red-head grinned like a shark. "Well. I haven't had a proper go against anyone as powerful as me. This should be _interesting_."

"You could try to stop her getting away with the golems!" Montmorency yelled from up on the rooftop, pointing with her mobile hand at the way that the lesser constructs were marching towards the larger one. "Isn't it easier to control one big one than smaller ones?"

"Well, slow them down with ice," Kirche ordered. "I can't really melt them without melting what they've carrying, too. I'll deal with Foquet!"

Burning green, dragging the Staff of Destruction, Louise tried to keep away from the golem who was lumbering towards her in an attempt to reclaim the relic. A punch did nothing but hurt her hand, and a kick was similarly ineffectual. Reaching out, the gold-silver alloyed hand snatched for the Staff, only for there to be a _gloing_and the golem to fall backwards, fracturing as green light flared from within its metal shell.

Arms screaming at her from the weight, Louise nonetheless smirked, her inner fire – which had been diminishing slightly – burning up again. These golems may have been made of precious metals, but as it happened, the Staff of Destruction was a heavy bludgeoning implement. The black velvet covering was falling away now, disintegrating after the Green Sun Nimbus Flare, and the actual form could be seen now. It was a thin, elegant staff of metal, quite unlike the gnarled wooden thing that Tabitha used, and even in the green light of her anima, the metal reflected in red and yellow and green and purple and blue, like a rainbow. But that was nothing compared to the... the blade that tipped it; a jagged piece of crystal around thirty centimetres long, and maybe ten centimetres wide, which was clearly asymmetrical...

_... picking her way across the glass-charred wasteland which reached from horizon to horizon, she thought of the lands that had once been here, and found she could not, and wept..._

... and it called to her, singing in wonder and joy and recognition. She breathed in, deeply, the awe and terror together filling her bones, and she tore off the remnant of the black velvet, to grasp the Staff – though, really, it was more of a spear, or maybe a glaive – of Destruction firmly.

"We need to save the treasure!" Louise yelled to all the others, eyes locked at the no-doubt priceless artefacts scattered all over the ground like some kind of set of farming tools left in the fields by idle peasants. The response to that was another hurricane blast of air from Tabitha riding above, sweeping the golems away from the vast earth construct, before the leviathan raised a hand, and rattled off a barrage of earthen spikes, forcing the dragon to try to pull a precipitous spiralling turn to barely avoid them, retreating to a safer distance. Fire splashed against that hand, breaking away chunks and leaving it glowing, and it moved to do the same to Kirche, who squeaked and dropped off the wall, out of site.

"Those ones, running towards the earth one!" Monmon yelled, trying to cast with her offhand, slowed down notably by it. Nevertheless, the legs and arms of several golems were now encased in ice, slowing them down or crippling them. "Kirche! One by the well, not carrying anything! Melt it!"

"'Bout time!" Red fire flared, a relief from the green, and a lance of heat left the golem puddle-like. And the grass on it on fire.

Staff of Destruction dragging on the floor, Louise stumbled forwards, towards one carrying two large crates and getting too close to the larger golem, which was walking around, collecting the smaller ones. With a grunt and scream, the blade hit the golem side on, and knocked it over, shattering into silver, gold and dirt. The two crates hit the ground, with the sound of smashing. The inertia could not be so easily fought, though, and the glaive went flying, to land vertically upright in the ground, vibrating slightly.

"Founder!" Louise yelled, even her muscles ached at the exertion she was putting them through. "Give me strength!" she added, darting over to try to wrest it out of the earth, where it was embedded, in both prayer and exasperation. Hefting it free ones again, she scanned around. And found that the two moons were no longer visible.

Because there was something in the way.

"_Look out!_"

As Louise found out, the vast golem moved with precipitous speed, albeit clumsily. The earth shook, as it headed towards her next. And the great fist of the golem came down. Louise threw herself aside with violent force, and _felt _the pulse of air blast her, felt the a piece of flying stone tear its way across her cheek. Flipping onto her feet with instincts which seemed far too engrained, the girl felt her stomach muscles protest at the way they were being treated. Time seemed to stand still, as she stared at the fist, which could have crushed her like an insect, and only one thought filled her mind, heart beating like a drum in her ears.

She _really_ loathed powerful mages. Not Mother, of course, she'd never hate Mother, but at times, when all seemed useless and she was doomed in _inexprimé_ ignominy, she hated the concept . She hated the way they had all that power, and never seemed to have done anything to deserve it. She hated the way that they seemed to have won some cosmic game of chance, the way that they, with their powers, made her feel small and useless and inadequate and a failure to her family. They never seemed to work as hard, they never tried... even Kirche and Tabitha, who were 'only' triangle mages, and who were on her side, had sauntered in as if she had done a 'good job' not dying to a powerful mage when it had only been her and Montmorency, who was still injured and exhausted, against _that thing_. And what had they done to deserve being triangle-rank at such a young age? Where was the fairness in that?

Nowhere.

But most of all? She hated that at-best-benevolent patronising attitude, that self-confidence, that way that they could so casually shrug off the idea that they were at all lucky, and 'it was all a matter of wanting it'. She wanted it. She had wanted it her entire life. She had a perfect bloodline, she studied and worked and tried and forced herself to continue until she was sick, until she sometimes collapsed from exhaustion or hunger, just as Mother had shown her to do, and what did she get for it?

Nothing.

Muscles screaming under the impossible weight of the two metre-long staff, she lunged forwards, sweeping it around with all her strength, in a wild sweeping blow. The girl channelled all her hate into that one blow. The world seemed all too shallow, like it was painted on the night's sky, as she struck, the light around her as dark as the void compared to her own incandescent radiance. She revelled in her strength. In this slowed world, she laughed to herself as the green fire surged within her soul and within the hand of the golem alike.

One blew apart, flares of viridescence preceding the grapeshot-like burst of clay that tore across the courtyard, embedding red-hot fragments into the far wall.

One burned to even greater intensity, and flared to new heights, taking on a sudden resolution and clarity which had not been there before.

Engulfed in a bonfire, Louise stood, staring up at the golem. It may have been night, but the entire courtyard was lit as brightly as day, in terrible green, flecked with brass which flared and surged, adding and shifting the hue of the radiance. But in the unhealthy glow, further details could be seen within the pyre; streets, corridors, towers and fortifications and emplacements all writ in brassy green fire. Zoom in closer, and the tiny dancing figures, at once less than the height of a man's fingernail, and yet fully detailed, and real and independent, moving as they saw fit, became evident. Six hundred and ninety-nine led the dance of ten-thousand figures, through the streets of the metropolis, in supplication to their terrible queen. And they were not the smallest; zoom even closer, and layers and layers of more complexity became evident, in this world made of the burning light of the girl's soul.

Looming above these subservient figures, these tiny subjects, towering in the light cast no shadows, was a vaguely feminine figure. It was taller than the highest tower, and its four arms were spread wide, exulting in the glory of her revelation. Opening her mouth, the titan of gilded-bronze and viridian sang out, a cry of victory, of triumph inevitable, of pain and distress and glory.

And what of Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière? She was... different. On her brow, a pair of brazen swords burned, glowing as if they were a window into a strange sun. Her hair had lengthened slightly, and now twitched and swayed on its own, moving in a way disturbing reminiscent of the idle twitching a hand. Through the terrifying mane, thin, elegant, almost dainty spikes of bone rose, a crown of horns with her caste mark as the crowning jewel. But even these things were subsumed by the overall change. For now, unlike before, she was imperious, a target of awe. The light of cruel authority, of mighty power burned in her eyes, and glowed within her skin, making her distant, cold, unreachable and divine. Lit by the light which had forged Creation, the thought of raising a hand against her was suddenly obstructed, hindered by the metaphysical weight of her presence.

Flying overhead, the dragon recoiled, letting out a panicked shriek, bucking and twisting until its mistress could calm it.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"... wow," muttered Kirche, grinning like a maniac as she slagged another golem. "I _have_ to learn how to do that myself!"

"Foundersfire," Monmorency swore to herself, staring up at the green, vaguely female behemoth and the demon city which it strode through.

"..." Tabitha did not say, soaring overhead, as she tried to calm her dragon.

"... oh, you have to be kidding me!" Foquet yelled from within her golem, staring in shock at the missing arm. "Not fair!" Bringing her other hand around in a backhanded slam, she grinned in satisfaction as the girl didn't even try to dodge. Beneath the giant's hand, the tiles cratered, some underground room collapsing into a sinkhole.

And then the pillar of sand, glowing brilliant green, and now resting on the hand of the golem recoalesced, and Louise slammed the Staff of Destruction into the golem's hand once again, this time from above.

With similar effects.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Standing in the rubble of the golem's other hand, Louise grinned like a madwoman. She... she had actually done it. And, yes, she now felt like her arms were about to fall off, because the Staff was Brimir-damned heavy, but she didn't care! She was a mage, and she could fight the golem-construct of a triangle-class mage and it was _glorious_ and ... oh, wow, she was feeling woozy. But she still felt like she could fight the entire golem, even if it had no arms, on her own.

The sad thing about that statement was that she probably would have to. And she wasn't sure that she could even pick up the Staff again, and... was that golem regenerating its arms?

No. It seemed to start and stop. And then the golem laughed, high and distinctively female. "You know what's funny?" Foquet declared, from inside. "You know the joke?"

"N-no?" Louise managed.

"I already got half the golems of gold, and what they carried," the woman declared. "So there's really no need to fight you. This is already worth wealth beyond measure, and you can damage my golem." It inclined its head slightly. "Fair well, little girls. And I believe you _will _most certainly remember this day, so, as a result, Foquet the Crumbling Dirt bids you adieu!"

And with that said, the golem turned on its heel, and, earth shaking with each footstep, it began to leave, arms reforming as it tore rocks from the ground and from the less warded of the buildings. Firebolt after fireball from Kirche slammed against it, but it ignored the barrage, and leapt the exterior wall of the Academy in a single bound.

"Come back and fight me, you whore!" Kirche yelled after it. "We were just getting started!"

"Kirche!" Tabitha called out, having already landed, leaping off her dragon's back. "Come!"

"What is it? We need to track down that bitch! She... coward... running from the wrath of the von Zerbsts rather than facing righteous justice!"

"... the fiancé-stealing wrath," Louise slurred, pupils dilated, sinking to her knees. Around her, the bonfire burned brilliant green, and her hair writhed spasmodically. It was probably only that which was keeping her upright, the tendrils extending to anchor her to the ground. And that was a state of affairs which ended when she started to empty her stomach on the ground.

"Sylphid. Hurt!" Tabitha announced over the sound of the retching.

That was enough to bring both Kirche and Monmon running.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Well, I got the barb out," Montmorency announced, wiping her by-now blood-soaked hands on her utterly ruined pyjamas, "but... I'm too tired to do anything but sterilise the wound and stop the bleeding. And..." she raised a hand to her forehead. "I think I need to go sit down. As in... right now. Really... oooh."

Supported by Kirche, she was walked over to the green bonfire which, although diminished, was still present. Louise looked normal once again, and was lying on the grass, staring up at the heavens and hugging the Staff of Destruction almost like a child. It would be, however, more accurate to say that she was lying on what had once been grass. Around her, in a perfect circle, the green spring grass was... yellowed. No, it was more metallic than that, the leaves still pliable, but decidedly... stiff.

Monmon collapsed besides her.

"Zero," Kirche said, looking down at the petite pink-haired girl. "Heh. That was... impressive." She clicked her knuckles. "It wasn't much fun being your rival when you were so pathetic."

"Go hang yourself, von Zerbst."

"See, that actually works," Kirche said, blowing a kiss at her.

"That wasn't a joke," Louise said, eyes flaring. In a non-literal sense.

Hand on hip, the Germanian shrugged. "So, when's the fire going to go out?" she asked, curiously. "And what was the bit where you went all monstrous?"

Louise tilted her head, and paused. "In an hour or so," she said, deliberately not answering the second question.

"Well, yes." Kirche looked up at the red orb of Taksony, and grinned. "Well, I'll go see if anyone's woken up yet, so we can get a _proper_ pursuit organised to catch that thieving coward! Tabitha's not going to leave Sylphid, and you two can't really walk. See you later, when maybe you can come up with a reason why you went all weird and glowy and monstrous, Zero."

No response, and Kirche left, bare feet against the paving.

"She's right, you know," Montmorency said, after a while. "That bit was... weird. You went all glowy and... and around you. In the green fire? There were... things?"

Louise was silent. And then, "What kind of things?"

The blonde twirled her fingers in her messy, ruined hair. "A four-armed woman of green fire," she said, softly. "A city. Tiny dancers in the city."

Another long pause from Louise. "I see."

Montmorency tried to prop herself up, and groaned, sinking back down, onto the strange grass. "What's going on with you?"she asked Louise, hand going to feel her bandages. "I saw _all_ of that. And... you don't get a familiar. You do things with green fire, and don't act like a dot-level fire mage should. You can apparently _turn into sand_. You catch _fire_."

"Really."

"Um... yes! I saw you! What is going on!"

Slumped down, the Staff of Destruction resting against her shoulder, Louise sighed and grimaced, staring down at her still-burning hands. It... it felt lighter now. Like it wasn't crushing her, like she could wield it as an extension of her body if she chose to. And that felt nice, so she hugged it tighter. "You want the truth?" she said, wearily. "Fine."

"_Fair lady, no!_"

"I... I failed. I... no familiar came. I don't know if it was because I was an _inexprimé_," those hateful words were hard to say, "or because I just couldn't concentrate after that first explosion hurt that poor bird. I th-think it was the latter one, though, because the _inexprimé_ don't make things explode, right?" She drew in a shuddery breath. "So I crept back at night, with the copy of the book, and went and did everything _perfectly_."

"You didn't!" Monmon was even paler than usual. "You know that all the elemental correspondences and... haven't you heard the stories? Ghosts and demons and monsters, oh my!"

Louise laughed, bitterly. "Yes. My... one of my sisters used to take pleasure in telling me those stories. And I think at that point I didn't care, as long as it was _something_. You don't understand," she continued, an air of desperation entering her voice. "My family... there isn't a _single inexprimé_ listed in the genealogies. So either I'd be the first failure _ever_, or they utterly disown and get rid of any de la Vallière who doesn't have the blood." She huddled up, a sick giggle burbling up. "Well, this shouldn't be true now. I... I hope Mother can be proud of me."

A pause. "What happened?" Montmorency asked, trying not to let her own worries get in the way. "Ze... Louise. _What did you summon?_"

"Nothing. I'd broken all these rules to do it then, tried my hardest, and..."

"And..."

"... and nothing. Still. Not even an explosion."

There was a snigger from the other girl. "Really? I thought that was meant to be an interesting tale, which explained why you could catch fire, and... nothing? Really?"

"By the Founders' Names, yes." Louise's smile disappeared, and she winced. "So... I ran back to my room, and there was something waiting for me. It... well, it was a she. Clearly. Pinky-purple skin." Louise thought back to that night. "Bald. Dark eyes. A... I can't describe the smell, but it was nice." She shook her head. "She said she was a familiar, looking for a new master, looking for one worthy to serve. That I'd called her, from somewhere far in the east, from... I think jungles." She paused, tilting her head slightly. "Yes, jungles... she said near somewhere called 'Ra-thais'," Louise worked her mouth around the syllables which were somehow unknown, and deeply, deeply familiar. "We talked. I... I decided to bind her, I completed 'Contract Servant', I think, because... then she fused with me."

The blonde paused, and ran a hand back through her sweaty hair, clinically pulling a lock out as she rewound the ringlet around her fingers. "That makes sense," she said, bluntly.

"Wait, what?"

"Well, it was clearly some kind of spirit. Maybe a champion-spirit. So... yes, it gave you access to its powers, for as long as you live."

Louise spluttered slightly. Partly because of how accepting the Flood was being, and partly because she now had a pretty good idea about Marisalon's mindset, and unless there were heroic champion spirits of Eating Grapes and Being A Scarlet Lady, she severely doubted that was true. And if it was true, and they did exist, she didn't think that she wanted that sort of power. "And you th-think this because..."

Monmon sighed. "I'm a Montmorency," she said, as if it explained everything.

It didn't explain it to Louise, and the girl said so.

"It _means_that I'm descended from the water spirits; our entire family is. Not recently, and other people claim that it's just mythology... and the Church promotes that, so my parents can't push for it, but we know it's true. If you'd ever dealt with the spirits, and had them recognise you as kin, you'd know it. It's said that we used to know how to welcome our kin into our flesh, to hunt-down oath-breakers, but the secrets were lost long ago." Montmorency shrugged. "People don't like to talk about it. Some parts I haven't mentioned to you, which we don't talk about outside the family." Her eyes narrowed. "There's a reason our family has declined in status and breeding," she said, her voice chilly.

"Oh." Louise sighed, stretching out her aching body. "So, what now?"

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was around forty miles away from the Tristain Academy of Magic, and Foquet the Crumbling Dirt had reached her destination.

Although, burned and frazzled and exhausted, she really wished she had waited to transfer the order to her client, who was taking rather too much pleasure from the contents of her triumphant theft. The pale-skinned woman, with those strange markings under her eyes, was... well, the only word was 'caressing' each of the parts she found, taking the blades and the strange metallic components and ignoring the gold and the jewels and the paintings. A breastplate was examined and breathed over, and kept, while another, a clearly more elaborate one from the reign of the last king's grandfather was discarded. Just like she always did.

It was very disconcerting. Still, at least it was almost over.

And... had she just squealed, Foquet thought in disgust? Yes, she had. The other woman carefully removed two twinned things which resembled some hybrid between a wand and a pistol from their rosewood case, and was stroking them. Carefully, one was returned to its box, and the other received a more detailed examination. A button was depressed, and like clockwork, a lattice of barbs unfolded spider-like around the central wand-like spike.

"Beautiful..." the dark-haired woman breathed, reaching out with one slightly shaking finger to stroke the delicate barbs which had unfolded around the central rod, sparkling in prismatic colours when it hit the light. "It's... so beautiful." The air flashed around her, just for a second, as she lifted the silvery devise reverently. "It's almost intact, too; damaged from age, and it's slightly misaligned, but that can be fixed."

Foquet stared at the woman cooing over the stolen good. "What is it?" she asked, curiously. "It looks almost a bit like a wand, but..."

Letting out a shuddery, ecstatic breath, the other woman adjusted her coat, regaining her composure. "A wand? Of sorts." White-gloved fingers ran along the central tube. "Perhaps it is as far beyond a wand as a wand is beyond a stick."

"What does that mean?"

A thin smile crept onto the other woman's lips. "I don't know, yet," she remarked. "It needs..." she seemed to be searching for a word, "... life, vitalism... it needs a steady supply of magic before it can operate. It would take a triangle-class mage just to bring its mechanisms to life, and they would be exhausted before they could even use it once." A chuckle, and the Myozunitonirun raised her hand, sighting down the wand at a nearby ramshackle building in this abandoned village in the fens. She said a single word, in a language that Foquet could not recognise, and purple light flared on her forehead, forming words for a brief second.

And the shack blew apart, in a purple-blue ball of lightning. Thunder cracked, echoing around the landscape, and the horses began to panic, bucking and shivering. The ball-lightning faded and earthed itself, and then all was quiet again, the only evidence the now-burning shack. Reverently, she laid the weapon – for that was what it surely was – back down again, and once again was all business.

"I have separated the things I desire from the rest. You may keep the rest as a retainer," the dark-haired woman said, casually dismissing the gold and the silver and the paintings. "In addition," she had one of the hulking armoured figures with her bring forwards a travel chest. "...in addition, here is the pre-arranged payment for your level of success," she added, almost insultingly, to reveal the gleam of newly minted coins, all bearing the seal of the Papacy. "Fair well, Madame 'Foquet'. You would best be heading back to your place of employment, no? Farewell. Contact us again if you acquire, or believe you will acquire anything on the lists I have provided."

And the Myozunitonirun had her escort duty begin repacking the treasures she had selected, into their own carefully padded cases for transport.

* * *

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	8. 7: Tales of Halkeginia I

**A Green Sun Illuminates The Void**

**Chapter 7: Tales of Halkeginia I**

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_Introduction to 'On the Brimiric Nations and their Origins, Volume I', by Eléonore Albertine Le Blanc De La Blois De La Vallière_

_Sanctioned by the Holy Church 637 BE, published by the University of Amstelredamme Press, 638 BE_

The object of this text is to provide a comprehensive history of the Brimiric peoples, and to dispel many of the less trustworthy or comprehensive mythologies and falsehoods that have grown up around history, bringing a most disreputable air to the entire field. To this end, I have endeavoured to travel widely, and sought out disparate sources, from the libraries of Roma, that holy city on the seven hills, to the palace-observatories of Versailles, to my well-known libraries of Amstelredamme and the ones in the palace at Bruxlles, and even to the less civilised region of Germania, which even now occupies lands that rightfully belong to Tristain.

As a result, to cover such things correctly, I have endeavoured to provide the necessary context and assignations for the following text. This first volume will cover the current status of the Brimiric Nations, holy Romalia, righteous Tristain, wealthy Gallia, now reunited with the breakaway Iberia and esteemed Albion, and the lesser, barbarians nation of Germania and the many and disparate kingdoms and princedoms of the Otmani. The second and later volumes shall cover more detailed histories of each of these places, to the best of my abilities.

And therefore, to introduce this book, I shall start with perhaps the most appropriate place for any piece of writing, and that is the languages of our blessed lands. The history of Halkeginia is written in words; a base tautology to some, but it is true in a more profound sense. Through the words we use to communicate, that I use to write, we can see the history of these sceptred lands in every piece. That I use the word 'word', rather than the archaic '_nom_' for the base part of speech is a legacy of the Yellow Pox. That plague ended the Golden Century of Tristainian supremacy, killed one in every three and left the lands weak to the Germani invaders from the West, and a subsequent mingling between the nobility and the peasantry which is seen in our speech; it is for that reason that the _inexprimé_ houses can even exist. The fact, with effort, we of Tristain, Albion, Romalia and Gallia can communicate is all due to our shared heritage as the people of Brimir, even though only Romalia's tongue remains relatively pure of the baser elements of the peasantry. The similarities between the peasant tongues of the nations likewise speak of contact and trade, however barbarous, between them before the people of Brimir bought civilisation and magic to them. Even the links of the Germanian peoples to other such barbarians can be seen in their language. In words and in speech, this history can be seen everywhere.

I will therefore be clear with the conventions which shall be used in this book. In its entirety, this book will be written in the modern language of Tristain, so-called High Tristainian. Although I did contemplate writing it in Old Tristainian, the limits that would impose upon the audience of this book would be unnecessary and unhelpful. Colloquialisms in Low Tristainian, the language of the peasantry, will be transcribed verbatim in cases where it is needed, and will be translated in all other cases. In truth, the difference is more one of dialect and synonym choices than a true linguistic division, but nonetheless, the separation remains wide enough that, especially in more rural parts, an individual speaking High Tristainian will be incomprehensible to the rusitics, whose language resembles more the pre-Brimiric speech, even after all this time. Certainly, by contrast, in the urban areas there is a noted unification between High and Low, as idioms of the urban poor enter the civilised language via the _inexprimé_ houses, and, likewise, they also covey the more erudite terms down to the lower classes. The similarities to the mixings of the bloodlines of the nobility are left as an exercise to the reader.

To the west of Tristain lies Gallia, our sister nation, to the extent that our royal families have been referred to as 'the twin crowns'. What this eloquent metaphor both conveys, and conceals, is that like all siblings, especially twins, our wars and fights have been long and bitter; not so much now, but certainly prior to the coming of the Germani, Tristain and Gallia warred long and hard. All the land which makes up modern Tristain was once Gallian, taken in glorious battle, and the cultural influence of Old Tristain is almost as strong in Gallia as it is in our own nation. Gallian, as a language, has the same divide between Low and High as Tristainian, and while High Gallian is a civilised Brimiric tongue, heavily influenced by Old Tristainian, Low Gallian is dreadfully uncouth, and almost nasal, its diversity a sign of the lack of travel of its speakers and of their low levels of literacy despite the best efforts of the Church. Gallia is woefully divided, and so the accent of one Gallian peasant might be incomprehensible to one who lives but twenty miles away. Only the presence of the nobility, High Gallian, and the child-like faith of the peasants in the sanctity of Brimir and Saint Orieris, patron saint of Gallia and its first queen, can be said to unify the nation; the royal family is weak and the nobility are strong, compared to historic Tristain, although the last two generations have seen a steady growth in royal power. We will see if the new king, Joseph I, can maintain the hold his father and grandfather have clawed over the nobility, or whether the so-called "Curse of the Twin Staves" will strike him, too, as it did his younger brother.

A note here must be taken for the Gallian province of Iberia, which split from Gallia in 520, under a renegade bastard son of the Gallian royal family, and which was re-conquered in 617 by the now-deceased Duke d'Orléans, who executed the false king, Henry II, in a one-on-one duel, bringing an end to the Ninety-Seven Year Treachery. Ethnically, the Iberians are a separate group to the peasantry of the rest of Gallia and the nobility alike, and these differences are represented in their architecture and their speech. Indeed, noted similarities can be seen between them, and some of the Otmani peoples, and there are intriguing hints that they were once a great peoples, scattered by some ancient disaster, but such is a matter for another time. Let us just say that Iberian has its own, odd, similarities to Romalian, which the more base tongues of other peasantries do not, and move on.

To the north, on the isolated, and frequently wet island of the mists, live the Albionese. Ethnically, the peasantry are kin to the native populace across the north of the continent, although it is said that they are more than a little inbred, and their language is both kin to that of the Tristainian rural classes, and notably incestuous, isolated as they are on their floating island. Compared to our own glorious heritage, most so-called noble families on Albion would classify as _inexprimé_ houses, so weak are their bloodlines and infrequent the number of mages they produce. And this poor breeding shows, for there is but one language, spoken by both the nobles and the peasantry. Modern Albionese is a degenerate bastard tongue, largely Brimiric in its grammar, but rife with peasant terms. Only the royal family and the few remaining bloodlines of acceptable purity, without exception closely related to the royals, speak a true Brimiric tongue, and indeed they have done admirably in maintaining its purity, for it is more akin to Brimiric than even modern Romalian.

This is not to downplay Romalia, home of our holy Father Church, sacred to Brimir, Lord and Founder, and southernmost of the Brimiric nations. The priesthood converses in Brimiric, and even the poor there speak a language more pure than High Tristainian or High Gallian, for the priests of the Church are sure to teach them well to maintain their purity. Literacy among the peasantry is high, for the Church makes most elegant work in ensuring that they can read the multitude of tales of the saints and such that come from the new printing presses of Roma and Napoli, and indeed it has already been noted that such revelation is improving their speech, removing the traces that remain from past occupation by Gallia and the barbaric influence of the Germani tribesmen called in as mercenaries by previous popes to ensure the sanctity of their papal states.

The Germani, of course, descend from completely different linguistic and ethnic groups to both the Brimiric nobility and the peasantry. In the aftermath of the Yellow Pox, while corpses still littered the streets and men and women were still dying, the rapacious Germani invaded what is now Germania, but which was once Tristain. While any efforts against them were hampered by the plague which killed in two weeks or less, the invaders were already afflicted by it and had been for generations, and so despite their lack of magic they could fight. The hordes that moved in subjugated the population, and took the children of nobility for their harems to give or sire on them children with magic, hence the barbaric, coarse tongue of the new, self-proclaimed Germanian 'nobility' has been softened by a proper language. Nevertheless, the language of the Germanian rich – who should not truly be called nobility, for they lack the basis in use of magic that civilised people have – is grammatically unrelated to the Brimiric tongues, and their fell influence and that of their hordes has suffused deep into the tongue of the peasantry. Though on the borders with Tristain and Gallia, they can be understood, deeper into the country one can no more talk to a peasant than one can to a dog, unless one speaks their base speech.

To the south and east of Germania lie the many and fragmented kingdoms of the Otmani, called wrongly by some, Otmania. The Otmani are kin to the Germani, dark of skin with hair in auburn and ebony, and indeed the bloodlines have mixed, for some among the Germani did not follow as far as Tristain, but instead took over lands for themselves from their own kin. If only more had done so. The Otmani are, as I have noted, kin to the natives of Iberia, in Gallia, and also to the Germani, and they once had a civilisation which rivalled even the heights of Roma, until the First Crusade, in the second century, broke their armies, and the Second which followed took many of their lands for the glory of Tristain, in a harbinger of the Glorious Century. Treasures from those days still decorate Roma, and lie, unjustly stolen, in the vaults of the Germanian Emperor. As one heads south and further east, the tongues in the broken kingdoms become stranger and lose even their similarity to Germani, and the people poorer, ever-fearing the rapacious nature of the elves who border their lands.

Of Rub-al-Khali, and of the elves, little can be said. The elves speak a language akin to Brimiric, though it is warped and distorted such that even the priesthood can barely understand them, and their script is illegible. I have seen documents taken from them in battle, archived in Roma, and though I could recognise a character or two, in truth I could comprehend not one word, written as it was in enigmatic ideograms, which may well – according to the priest I spoke to – be a battle-tongue unrelated to their main mode of speech. Even less can be said of Rub-al-Khali, for the elves bar the way to their lands, and to Ind and Cathay, even further to the East. The only men who have been there crossed via the blasted, ruined lands which were once the lands of the Germani, and few return, fewer yet with the treasures that those lands are famed for.

To the west, there are islands, settled by Gallia and Albion, and beyond that is nothing but ocean, and the tall tales of sailors. Nothing more is known, though astronomy has conclusively proven that our world is a globe, from the shadow it casts upon Taksony and Dorika when it eclipses them. We need not speak of the languages there, for there are none to speak them.

And with this cursory look at the world, and of the lands and languages within, I can conclude this introduction. In passing, I would like to dedicate this book to my parents, who have made me the woman I am today, to my sisters in the hope that they will overcome the troubles that God has seen fit to inflict on them, and to my first tutor, Georges Auguste Couthon, who set me on this path. May God and Founder watch over all of them, and aid them, keeping them from harm.

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	9. 8: A New Day's Dawn

**A Green Sun Illuminates The Void**

**Chapter 8: A New Day's Dawn**

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The spring light seeped through the long curtains, the sun rising to the east to cut away the darkness.

There was a smack, as a bare foot resounded against a stone floor.

The dawn chorus of birdlife was already singing, a barrage of noise enough to wake, if not the dead, then at least the moderately ill. The enchanted windows would have been proof against them, had they not already been thrown open, to let in the dew-scented air.

The air hummed like a finger on a wine glass, as the sweep of the pole cut through the air. In the passage of the jagged, asymmetrical blade, a faint smell, like that of the air after lightning, was left lingering. Forwards, into a lunge, back into a guarding position, forwards and forwards, only stopping before it hit a wall. The gouges in the decorations suggested that such attempts had not always been successful. A turn, and then around again it swept, and again, before its base was slammed into the floor, bringing its motion to a sudden stop. In that frozen moment, a shape in colourless fire flowed across the crystal blade, like fallen petals, before vanishing once again.

Louise let out the breath that she had been holding, and adjusted the strap on her nightdress. Slightly foolishly, she grinned at her shadowed reflection in the mirror. She was only glowing slightly this time! She was getting better at working out her endurance at doing... whatever it was she did before she caught on green fire!

"_Can't we go back to bed?_" Marisalon grumbled in her head. "_It's cold out here, and although the bed would be warmer if there was someone else in it, it's still only just light. Urgh. Why do all other suns need to be the wrong colour?_"

"You're the one who told me I needed to practice, and get used to it," Louise said, placing down the staff, as she practiced punching and kicking in front of her mirror. "You've been complaining at me all week, making me get up to practice before classes and not letting me sleep until I did."

"_But I finally got the hang of your calendar and its silly names!_" the neomah whined. "_And I know it's voidsday today. Fairest lady, I told you that you could have the morning off! Why did you not take it?_"

Louise grinned, taking a step forwards as she went to wipe her brow, only to find it as dry as always. "I woke up early," she remarked.

"_Why! Accursed sun, with your malignant cycles and variable position and unnatural orange-yellow light, why must you torme..._"

"Marisalon. Shut up."

Despite the whining of the neomah in her head, Louise felt... good. Over the last two weeks, she really had been getting better at this. Whatever the full range of her powers were, she seemed to now be naturally _good _at combat. Normally, only elite, powerful mages like Mother or the royal guard ever managed to cast without incantations or wands, turning the motions of their body into the focus for the magic, but... it flowed with her. The strange green fire that she could make flowed equally from fist and around the Staff of Destruction, and although she hadn't yet worked out how to do that easy trick of any dot Fire mage, the humble fireball, she had found day before yesterday that she could make clouds of lacerating sand. So she was apparently both a dot Fire mage and a dot Earth mage, although Marisalon continued to deny that such categorisations were at all relevant to what she did, and express perplexity about simple things that even the peasants knew.

That might also have been contributing to her happiness somewhat. Marisalon was somewhat less lecherous when she was confused or worried, and in their time together, Louise had already leaned to treasure such moments.

Of course, the fact that she was now entrusted with the care of an exceptionally rare, powerful and potent magical item, the Staff of Destruction itself, might have had something to do with her happiness.

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_Two weeks earlier_

Wet flannel on his brown, Headmaster Osmond sat back in his chair, and peered down at the girls in front of him. He had come to, slumped on a table, and had a splitting headache. And the tale he had just been told would have been confusing at the best of times, let alone a few hours before dawn after just being poisoned.

He had asked them to repeat it, heard it again, and it still didn't make much sense.

Eh. He was just going to act like he understood it, and blame any misunderstandings on them failing to explain such a tale properly to an old man. "Mmm," he said out loud. "So. Mmm." He winced, as the throbbing in his forehead intensified for a moment, and then retracted. He'd been poisoned before, of course, but it was no more fun this time than it had been the last few times. He was getting old, sadly. "Mmm. Let me be clear. You, Miss de la Vallière and Miss de Montmorency were... ah, yes, in the infirmary. And you, Miss von Anhalt-Zerbst and..."

"Late coming in," Tabitha said, clearly. "Didn't eat before it had an effect."

"Mmm, yes." The old man leant forwards, the wet cloth sliding off his forehead onto his lap with a splat, as he rummaged through some desk drawers, eventually finding a small pouch of smoking weed. "Fortunate," he added, peering at the blue-haired girl as he pulled out a pipe from a pocket.

Tabitha stared back, blankly.

The headmaster shook his head, and lit his pipe. And immediately began to cough, deep hacking coughs, as waves of nausea overcame him. Taking a deep breath, he glared in disgust at the old, rounded clay bowl of his third favourite pipe. So, he wasn't going to be able to smoke without feeling sick, was he, until he got over that? Oh, someone was going to _pay _for that. He sighed again, and muttered as he extinguished it.

The four girls were staring at him now, with confusion on three faces.

"So, golem shows up, Foquet begins stealing things inside using more golems, etcetera, etcerera..."

Kirche nodded, scraping back a lock of hair from her face. "Yes," she said. "We arrived later, because we had to fetch Tabitha's dragon as we were sure... just sure... that the Academy was under attack in some way."

Osmond glanced at the Germanian girl, noting the way that she had acquired what looked like the jackets of one of the Academy's guards, which was fastened up tight. "Mmm," he said, "... and then Foquet is confronted, etcetera, and..." This was where it got more than a little unbelievable. "Miss de la Vallière apparently destroyed both its hands with..."

The pink-haired girl in front of him puffed up her chest. "It was labelled as the 'Staff of Destruction', Headmaster," she said, proudly, hefting the strange, spear-like staff up.

"I know that," the old man said, bluntly, before smirking. "Who do you think discovered it in the first place?" The look of shock on three of the girls' faces, and the expression of mild interest on Tabitha's was rather pleasing to him, so he continued, "I wasn't born old, you know. Why, back in my youth, I was quite a little ragamuffin and adventurer."

The snort from Montmorency indicated that she could not really associate the wizened old mage before her with the term 'ragamuffin'.

"Yes indeed, it's not funny, Miss de Montmorency! Why, I got up to some rather scoundrel-full things, and, well, for one reason and another, it was felt best that I take a tour around the nations, so that the rumours could die down." He waggled his eyebrows at the girls. "Rumours which, to this day, I refuse to confirm or deny. Well, one thing led to another, and I was ended up in eastern Germania, heading even further east, with a nun who decided she didn't want to be a nun any more – especially that whole 'vow of chastity' thing, a Albionese skywayman, and a man who juggled geese and who had been caught in a rather compromising position with one of them."

Kirche's mouth was hanging open. Slowly, she closed it again. "... how do you juggle geese?" she managed. "Aren't... they a little large?"

Headmaster Osmond stroked his beard. "Goslings, my girl. Goslings."

The redhead worked her mouth. "I... see," she managed, before grinning. "So what happened next?"

"Well, to cut a long, and rather enjoyable story short... because that former nun was feeling rather frisky, we ended up being paid by a baron to make a map of parts of the east, because he wanted to set up a mine there." The headmaster groaned, rather theatrically, and put the back of his hand to his forehead. "Could one of you girls be as nice as to bring me another wet flannel. I feel quite ill."

One was promptly provided.

"Well, yes." He shook his head, as he mopped his brow. "It's a terrible place, over there. You might know, Miss von Anhalt-Zerbst, but the lands there are cold and barren and desolate. And... people are impressed by Albion, yes? Well, there are floating islands there that put Albion to shame; barren rocks that blot out the sun, forming a dome over the world. There are... savages up there, too; barbarians who strap windstones to their chests and jump from rock to rock."

"Those used to be the Germani homelands," Kirche said, squaring her jaw.

There was a noise from Louise. "Until you came in like a savage horde bringing the Yellow Pox and r-raping and pillaging, you mean?" she interjected.

Kirche shrugged. "Well, yes," she said, flatly. "As our ever so wise headmaster has said, people can't live in that kind of place. But please," she said, smiling winsomely at the old man, "carry on, without this ill-bred girl interrupting."

"Ill-bred!"

"It's a wider sense of breeding than the mere lineal sense," Kirche said, looking down her nose at Louise, which wasn't hard considering the comparative difference in their heights. "You're acting like an ill-mannered peasant."

"You'd know exactly how peasants act, considering that Germanians live just like..."

"It was at one of these barbarian tribes that we found we could trade some of the beads we found, and just pay them to make maps," the headmaster continued, loudly. "That was a lot easier, and made us all feel like fools. And, well, they had their own magics, primitive rituals, but compared to a real mage, they were nothing. We struck a deal, where we'd raid their enemy for them, and in return they'd get us to make maps. The enemy were up on a floating island larger than the capital, you see... and right in the middle of it, the Staff of Destruction was embedded. In the middle of a crater, too, and the crater was flooded. The tribe that lived there were powerful, you see, because they had this safe source of water, and there were plants growing around it, and would you believe it, but they worshipped the staff, as some kind of god-spear!" The headmaster chuckled. "Well, we had our magic and our guns and the skywayman had been training the former nun to shoot all our way east... rather good shot she was, too. They had a treasure trove at the bottom of the lake, clearly taking shiny things and throwing it in, so we all knew we'd hit the jackpot."

Kirche was grinning widely, by now. "What kind of things?" she asked

"Gold, gems, some other things... now, I was a mage, so I knew what was most valuable. Of course, the man who juggled goslings tried to kill me on the way back, but that just meant that the three of us had more to split up." He sighed. "The Staff was the real prize, though, but it was like... like it was made of lead. Inordinately heavy. We had to pay some porters to carry all the things we'd got, back. The ex-nun and the skywayman and me went our separate ways... well, those two went off together, and I heard they bought a title of nobility together, somewhere in Germania... but I headed back to the Academy, with my treasures, and more than enough to quieten any mutterings down."

Monmon blinked heavily, and hesitantly raised her hand. "Uh... sir," she asked, wobbling slightly from the tiredness she was feeling from the use of magic and the lack of sleep. "Why are you telling us this? About... um... the things that you got up to which... um, might not have been proper? And uh... well, you said people weren't telling the stories anymore, so... why tell it?"

"Because it's a really good story," Kirche answered for him, eyes ablaze.

Osmond smiled benevolently, despite his headache. "Yes, it is," he said, "and, who knows? Some of it might even have been true." Kirche made a disappointed noise. "But the Staff," he continued, ignoring her, "... ah, the Staff. It went to the Academy, and it was still here when I became a teacher, and then later, as headmaster. And, Miss de la Vallière, it has never got lighter. In fact," he said, leaning forwards, raising his brows, which would have been snowy white were it not for the slight yellow tint from his smoking habit, "it seemed to get heavier, whenever I tried to work out what it was for, though that may have been me getting older. Miss de la Vallière, are you exceptionally strong?"

He kept his gaze focussed on the girl, and noticed how she blushed. "Not really?" she answered, her voice rising as a question. "It's... uh, it's started being light." She demonstrated, by lifting the crystal-tipped metal staff in one hand. "It... it was a strain at first, but now it's like it's made of wood."

With an effort, the headmaster pulled himself to his feet, feeling his age more than usual, and hobbled over. "May I?" he asked.

The girl nodded, her head bobbing. "Of course," she said quickly, thrusting it towards him, almost asking him to take it back.

That was what he had been trying to avoid, because it seemed no lighter to him, and he sagged, dropping it, where it made a clunking noise not unlike a heavy weight being dropped, and incidentally gouged a hole in the stone floor.

"Impressive," Tabitha said, tilting her head slightly, even as Louise babbled apologies and picked it up again easily, and as Monmon helped the headmaster to his feet.

The old man hobbled back around to his seat, slumping down onto the cushions with relief. "It doesn't seem any lighter to me," he said, letting his voice shake slightly. "But it's a mystery. An interesting one, that is... interesting to me." He paused, and coughed. "Miss de la Vallière, do you feel you can look after this Staff properly? Some mages wield them, after all," he nodded towards Tabitha, "although, of course, we will need to get you a covering for it, because it is rather... obvious right now. All... shiny."

"Y-y-you're giving it to m-me?" Louise stammered, her face scarlet.

"You're giving it to _her_?" Kirche blurted out, her own face reddening.

The old man shook his head, gravely. "No," he said. "This will remain Academy property. But it... well, there are accounts of enchanted weapons or staffs, made for only one wielder. It is said that the Gandalfr, one of the servants of Brimir, had one, as did... well, your own ancestor and near namesake, Louis de la Vallière, who pushed the borders of Tristain up to Lake Ragdorian and beyond in the Glorious Century. And one of their properties is that they apparently choose their masters. Or," and he raised his eyebrows, "as the case may be here, their mistresses."

"Wait." Montmorency raised her hand again. "Are you saying that... a staff worshipped by barbarians in the far east, which you found when you were a young man... is somehow...um... the destined weapon or something of the Z... of Louise?" The girl swallowed. "Isn't that...implausible?"

Kirche let out a bark of laughter. "Apparently the Zero can set herself on green fire. Maybe it comes with the territory. Maybe it only works for people who've learned the strange and mystical art of self-immolation. Hah! I can't wait to tell people apart this."

Louise didn't retort, but her gaze looked slightly unfocussed, as if she wasn't quite paying attention to the conversation.

"And this is where we come to the second part of the conversation," Headmaster Osmond said. "Do you girls understand what this means? Fouquet of the Crumbling Dirt managed to break into even our vaults, and escape with so many treasures. This place is more protected than anywhere but the royal vaults... and they're only about as protected. That means... and you said 'he' was a she, didn't you? That's useful." The old man steepled his fingers together, and then gazed at the girls over them. "That means, though, that _anywhere_ in the country is vulnerable. We must tell the Palace, but we don't want to spread further. It could cause a panic. And... uh, be rather embarrassing for the school."

Kirche puffed out her jacket covered chest. "You mean we don't get a reward for saving a lot of the treasure, or _almost_ stopping her? No titles or jewels or... well, the Zero gets a magical staff, but nothing for the rest of us?"

There was a twinkle in the headmaster's eyes. "Oh, I think you'll find the Academy will be grateful, if you know what I mean. Certain... exam marks can be raised. Misdemeanours overlooked. Things like that." He cleared his throat. "But if you want to benefit from this, it has to stay _secret_. All of it."

"Eve-even my m-magic?" Louise stammered.

"If it happened tonight, it doesn't get mentioned," the headmaster said, clearly. "You two were in the infirmary," he said, nodding at her and Montmorency, "and you two were in the main hall. By the sunrise, the lawns will already be repaired. No-one is to know, understand?"

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And, indeed, the old man had been true to his word. As far as most people were concerned, the drugging at the meal had been a student prank gone rather wrong, and the Academy teachers were hot on the heels of the perpetrator.

Louise, incidentally, knew exactly how much of his tale had been true and how much had been false. Over the last two weeks, she had found _exactly _how useful the ability to test if someone was lying had been. It was just a shame that it wasn't more overt and 'magic-ey' she thought, looking at herself in the mirror with a sceptical eye, checking that her flowing golden gown was fastened at an appropriate level. She would be having dinner with Marius tonight, poor man, and the last such get-together had been rather... rudely interrupted.

The girl flinched and shuddered, the gold and the light and marble melting away to leave only her, in her nightdress. These moments were coming too frequently for her liking. All the gold was... beautiful, but instinctively the pink-haired girl had a distrust of it, because it didn't work with her complexion. And she had no idea who 'Marius' was, and that wasn't even her mirror that she had been looking herself in. She sighed. It would be nice if her mirror was a vast wall of that beautiful substance that didn't seem to be glass.

"_Do you want to talk about it?_" Marisalon asked, her voice soft. "_Fairest lady, I feel you are upset, but I do not know what upsets you._"

Louise shook her head. "Not really," she muttered. "Just a daydream. Nothing real." Even if it was a daydream which felt more real than any daydream should, and which seemed to feature things that she had no idea that she should know...

... not that that wasn't already a problem. In some classes, she'd had flashes of knowledge telling her that things she knew, that she was being taught were wrong, or incomplete, or written in the wrong language, or... well, it was an irritation, and also confusing. And worrying.

She still wasn't going to tell Marisalon, though. The neomah was in her head all the time. If there was something in there which was her own, which the voice didn't know about and didn't experience, then she wasn't about to give up some of her last personal space.

Even if it _did_ make her wonder if she was going crazy. On the other hand, that was usually considered to come with the voices in your head telling you to do things, and...

"_If you're up early, of course, which is to be most intimately praised despite the fact that it's cold out here and I told you that you could sleep in for this day, then we can get started. As I have, eloquently and precisely, informed you, your previous task to spread the most joyous worship of the true rulers of the world through the city of Paragon is no longer valid because there is something exceptionally perplexing going on_" the neomah said, her voice turning shriller towards the end, "_but I'm perfectly sure it will all be sorted out and fine and we can find out why there are two moons and a lot of the things about this world are completely and utterly wrong and it will be... fine. Hence, fairest maiden in all of the lands, assemble a base of power independent of all the major powers here such that you can command loyalty from those who owe no loyalty to others. Bring forth your dominion and gather your power, so that you may crush the foes of the creators!_"

... she already had that. So maybe she was crazy. But she didn't _feel_ crazy, and that was probably what mattered. Also, just being crazy didn't give you the power to make things explode with green fire, and fire cutting silver sands around, and she could certainly do that. Which was a wonderful feeling, and as soon as she could actually show it off, no-one would ever dare call her 'Zero' again.

Louise shook her head, and began to practice the basic moves which Marisalon had told her about, and which, more so, felt _right_ and proper to her. It was barely dawn, and they wouldn't be serving food for hours yet. And it felt so _nice _to have something that she could do easily, that she didn't have to strive for hours for no effect. Hopefully she could show this off to Mother, next time she saw her, and impress her. Hopefully.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The Great Hall was warmly lit by the morning sun, streaming in through the vast east-facing windows, and the magical lights were tuned such that their illumination matched this morning light. The white cloths covering the tables were painted in rosy hues, and the silverware shone, freshly placed delicacies and delights on the table. Some were not even native to Tristain, and were instead imported or grown in the schools botanical gardens. Either way, the morning's sun revealed great wealth and privilege, beyond the comprehension of the peasantry.

Despite this, the hall was largely empty, with more serving staff present than students. It was a voidsday, after all, and neither the students nor the staff were particularly well inclined to rising early on the sacred day of holy rest. As a result, breakfast was a prolonged affair, with people dribbling in to eat right until the tables were cleared for lunch. In many cases the late-risers would head kitchenwards to try to scavenge from the remnants, which was a bone of contention with the help, who seemed to believe that scraps were their right.

Louise smoothed down the slightly puffed-up sleeves of her pale yellow dress, and rebalanced the Staff of Destruction on her shoulder, which was what responsible for the mussing, as she looked for a seat. The artefact itself was wrapped back back up in the coverings – a leather sheaf over its crystalline blade, and bandages tied around its oddly-shiny metal shaft – and so looked much more like a normal mage's staff. With a raise of her eyebrows, she noticed Montmorency Margarita la Fère de Montmorency sat at the table, apparently feeding crackers to her frog-familiar, and headed over to sit with her. In the time since the incident with Fouquet, the two of them had come to a... a sort of a friendship, at least. There was certainly vitriol, and jibes, and use of the nicknames 'Flood' and 'Zero' without prior provocation, but there was something about an attack of a giant golem smashing through the ward in the infirmary you were sharing that created a certain bond.

"Morning," Louise remarked, sitting down, and yoinking a menu from the stack of parchment in the centre of the table, to see what the hot specials were today.

Montmorency looked up. "Mmm," she said in response, as she provided her frog with caviar-smeared cracker, which it appeared to be eating with great relish. "Morning. Sleep well? Set yourself on fire this morning?"

There was a pause, as one of the serving staff hurried over to hear that Louise would be having spiced porridge with quail's eggs.

"No," Louise said, coldly. "I'm getting better at not setting myself on fire."

"Progress." A ribbet from the frog, and Monmon looked around, to make sure that no teachers could see that she'd bought her familiar in –where, technically, they were not meant to be, but the blonde held that such a rule didn't apply to a familiar you could fit in a pocket – and then poured some watered-down wine into a spoon, so that the frog could drink it. "Last voidsday, you were glittering when you came down."

"As I said, I'm getting better." Louise smirked. "And there's nothing wrong with..." she yawned, which rather broke the flow of the conversation. "Anyway," she added, "so, what will you be doing today?" she asked the blonde, toying with her fork, as she swept her eyes over the table.

"_Grapes! Mistress fair, beautiful, wondrous, and glorious! Look, grapes! Eat the grapes!_"

"Hmm," Monmon said, tilting her head slightly. "I think I was going to have to do something. What was it?"

"_Please! Please, in your uttermost kindness, please?_"

Slowly, Louise reached out, and speared a single grape with her fork, bringing it painstakingly towards her mouth.

"_Yes! Yes! Yes!_"

The blonde sighed. "That was it. I've had the base elements of... of a potion soaking in nacre for two nights, now, and the reagent should undergo albedo at midday, if I had the timing right... and I should have, because I've been keeping the ice bath topped up, so it's at a constant temperature. It's not hard, but it's time consuming, and once that happens, I'll need to be fairly quick before xanatosis happens and ruins it."

"Oh?" Louise remarked, tapping the skewered grape against her teeth, to the protests of the neomah in her head. She knew little about alchemy, and cared less. Quite apart from the fact that it was, according to her father, worryingly mercantile in practice, if not according to theory, she didn't have the water magic needed to make best effect of it.

Montmorency smiled to herself, in a rather self-satisfied way. "Oh, yes. If that happened," she dropped her voice, "well, quite a few people here might be having surprises in nine months or so."

Louise spluttered, and dropped her fork.

"_Noo~oooo! My precious! My beloved grapes! My..._" Louise grabbed a handful from the table, as just to shut the head-familiar up, "_My delicious! My beloved grapes! Mmm._"

'Be quiet, now,' Louise mentally ordered. "What?" she replied to Monmon, as she bent down to recover her fork.

The other girl looked momentarily surprised. "Are you that naive?" She wrinkled her nose.

"_I can explain it in full detail if you want to avoid seeming ignorant to her, fairest lady,_" Marisalon contributed. "_I have crafted many, many infants over my life, and also borne a few while summoned. When a human mates with one of the neomah, it works much like it does for two humans._" There was a weary sigh. "_Of course, that was rather a surprise to me first time it happened. I'd only flesh-crafted children the proper way before._"

"I know where babies come from," Louise blurted out, to both Monmonrency and the voice in her head. "And..." she added, to thwart a joke that her older sister Eleonoré was fond of, "how they got there in the first place. I've even seen it with horses." She coughed. "I just..."

Montmonrency sighed. "Let me spell it out for you, then, since you can't get subtle implications and you're so pig-headed in your self-absorbed 'well-bred' manner," she said, slightly caustically, after looking around to make sure that there weren't any teachers nearby. There weren't. They tended not to get up that early on resting days. "Maiden's Reassurance. Fairly easy to make, if you're a competent alchemist. Most people aren't. People pay me _money_ so they don't have to try to find an apothecary in the capital who won't tell their parents," she said, as if explaining to a small child. "So, incidentally, if you want to have to avoid that yourself, I can get some of it for you, too. For the usual price."

"Not an option... even if I w-wanted to," Louise managed, trying to keep the blush off her face, and appear mature and dignified. "And if any of the b-boys here were actually... worth anything. M-Mother would kill me if I did anything to ruin the marriage she's arranged for me."

"Yes." Montmorency tapped her fingers against the table, the conversation taking another pause as Louise's breakfast was served. "Yes, they aren't worth anything." Viciously, she stabbed her spoon into a melon. "Guiche is flipping between 'wooing' me, trying to get me to forgive him, and spending his waking hours with that hussie in the first year. Hah! Doesn't he think I can see him from the windows? Doesn't even have the _decency_ to flirt with other girls _behind_ my back! Or maybe he's just an _idiot!_" she exclaimed, concluding her sentence by working the spoon even deeper.

"You Tristainain girls are so shallow about that," Kirche remarked, passing by. "Your need for ego-justification by your elaborate courtships are just delaying the fun part, you know?"

"Germanian hussy," both Louise and Monmon snapped together.

"And don't listen into other people's conversations," the blonde added.

"Look, I'm providing this advice free," the redhead said, with a roll of her eyes. "Do you like him, or not? If so, chase after him, if not, don't. But sitting around stewing about him acting like a boy won't get you him back, and is a waste of time that you could be using to find someone more fun."

"Well, thank you ever so much," Monmon said, coldly. "But some of us have standards, and expect them from others. You apparently have none, so why don't you respond in kind to his constant and _unfaithful_ attempts on others, then?"

Kirche smirked. "What makes you think I haven't?" she asked, relishing in the way that Montmorency's face suddenly went white.

"What are you even doing up?" Louise added, sneering. "Surely you've had a busy night."

"_Maybe... no, I won't say that, fair lady._"

Kirche ran a hand through her red hair. "Maybe, maybe," she said, letting out a peal of laughter. "But, you know. You Tristainians might want to stay inside, getting weak and flabby and preserving your pale skin, but some of us come from less decadent countries, and a girl needs to stay in shape. Else a boy will never want her, and she won't be able to look after herself." She flicked her head. "I do so enjoy these little chats," she added, "but, really, I must eat. I have a full day planned, you know."

Louise swallowed hard, and unclenched her fists, noting the slight bloodied marks, already healed over, where she had cut her palms. "She's just saying that to wind you up," she told the other girl, staring at the blood in disgust. She wiped the bloodstains off her brassy fingernails on a napkin with a sigh, and picked up a spoon, to begin on her spiced porridge.

"I know, I know. Guiche wouldn't go where so many men have gone before. Would he?" She shook her head, and with a conscious effort refocused. "No matter how much I see those, they never stop being strange," she said, changing the subject with a flick of her blonde curls. "Fingernails should not be made of brass. And you're getting worryingly casual about minor cuts."

The pink-haired girl sighed. "They grow, too," she said, her shoulders slumping. "And I blunted my nail file on them. That's one of the things I'm going to have to get when I'm in Bruxelles today. It's really annoying. I liked that nail file. And... look. If I went to the infirmary every time I cut myself on them, I'd look like an idiot. They heal up almost instantly, anyway."

"My shoulder still aches, thanks to you. I wish I was having to suffer healing like that."

"The only _problem_ with the cuts," sighed Louise, looking at the small crimson spot on her sleeve, ignoring the other girl, "is that while _they_ disappear fairly quickly, the bloodstains _don't_."

Monmon sighed, and shook her head. "So you're going into the capital?" she asked, changing the topic away from the topic of unnaturally fast-healing hands.

"Mmm. Yes. I need some more clothing for casual wear, and," Louise smirked, "some of my dresses are getting a little short. You have no idea how happy this makes me."

The blonde raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I have a clue. I'm hardly some Germanian barbarian," she shot a vicious glare at Kirche, who was sitting on another table eating bacon, "or a peasant. Civilised ladies are petite, after all, but..." she blushed, "there's such a thing as too short."

"Oh, I know, when the serving staff can look down at you! It's... terrible!"

"Yes, or when you feel tiny because peasants years younger than you are the same height!"

The two girls nodded in mutual sympathy, consoling each others on the terrible suffering inflicted on the nobility, and the trials imposed on them and their bloodlines.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Once again, Professor Colbert had been dragged from his nice warm... well, actually it was rather drafty at times, and the roof leaked on the south side... dragged from his pleasant, if a little chilly laboratory-workshop, to do a task for the Academy. Sometimes he wondered if any of the other teachers ever did anything beyond simply teaching. Why was it always him who got chosen to investigate strange phenomena and anomalies? There was the work he was doing on translating that book in the archives – and the colbertotype was working with no more than normal problems and the occasional spills of mercury, the fascinating conundrum which was the apparently-undying crane which had been involved in Miss de la Vallière's failed summoning, the issue of Miss de la Vallière herself, and now, on top of that, this.

He would have been complaining more that he had been tasked with searching for reports of where the infamous Fouquet had gone, with her ill-gotten gains, had it not been for the fact that Miss Loungeville, the headmaster's secretary, was aiding him in this long and tedious search through reports.

Why, he was quite sure that with her extremely attractive aid in his investigations, he would be able to get closer to Fouquet of the Crumbling Dirt than any man before!

"Professor? I have something." Ah, there she was, holding a report from the capital. "Something from the report package from the south. Look. A roadwarden reports finding a section of road ruined by giant footsteps. And..." she flipped over the parchment, "there was even a sketch, with a scale. I thought..."

"Ahah!" Colbert exclaimed, with a gleam in his eye. "Yes, let me just..." he rummaged through the papers in this commandeered office, "... yes, the scale matches. Precisely. From this, we can be pretty sure that Fouquet was heading south! Good job, Miss Loungeville!"

The woman paused, fiddling with her collar. "It isn't my place," she said, a touch shyly, "but you're wrong, Professor. That only means it was her golem heading south. We don't know what the criminal herself was doing. Remember, she was smart enough to arrange a heist like this. We have to assume that you're dealing with a criminal mastermind." She looked down at him, papers clutched to her – rather notable, in the man's attention – bosom, her expression demure. "Of course, I might be speaking out of place..."

Colbert leaned back. Yes, that was true, that was true. He really had been too fast to declare triumph. "That's well said, Miss Loungeville," he said, adjusting his glasses. "Snap judgements... very dangerous and often wrong. Yes, thank you. You're food... I mean, you're good. Sorry. Getting slightly peckish, despite the fact I've only just had breakfast."

She let out a nervous titter. "Professor, I'm a secretary. Following trails of paperwork is what I do, and if there's one thing I've learned while working here, it's that just because someone's signed the paperwork, doesn't mean that that they've actually done this. In this case, Fouquet has left her signature, but that doesn't mean that she went that way."

The man leant back in his seat, and rubbed his balding patch. "Hmm. Miss Loungeville, I would like you to check the other districts for any evidence that Fouquet passed through there. Look at roadwarden's reports, complaints of use of earth magic on fields... things like that. I'm going to see if I can track down the golem, because we don't know that she split from it, but I'd like you to look for a rogue earth mage. I mean, you're perspective, and..." he let out a chuckle, "... well, you seem to have women's intuition, while I," he spread his hands, "do not."

The dark-green haired woman blushed. "Th-thank you, sir," she stuttered, before heading back to her own desk filled with paperwork.

Jean Colbert grinned, once he was sure that she wasn't paying attention to him. She was very useful indeed. Certainly far more than eye candy, which was what the headmaster normally seemed to select for. Still, from that hair colour, she was probably a bastard child of some noble who hadn't taken proper care when engaging in conjugal relations with commoners. Bright and attractive was not exactly an uncommon pair of attributes among those types. And certain other of her attributes were uncommonly, and uncommoner-ly, good.

He let out a contented sigh. Yes, this was much more pleasant than being attacked by an ill-tempered immortal crane.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The coach, emblazed with the emblem of the Academy of Magic, rattled along the earth-mage created road. It was full with students of all ages heading towards the capital. Louise had been early enough to get one of the inside seats, rather than having to sit on the rather colder and draughtier roof, and so was leaning against a window, staring out the window, as the other boys and girls chatted. The Staff of Destruction was an ever-present weight, leaning against her shoulder, and she had already dodged, evaded, or told to go away several questioners, asking for details on her new magical staff. Most people used wands, but staffs were common enough that it was by no means unique.

Instead, to pass the time, she had Marisalon talking about... she was still a little confused exactly what manner of creature they were, but these 'first circles' sounded sort of angelic or spirit like. She was pretty sure they weren't angels, though, because the neomah in her head was apparently a fairly normal example of such things. And angels shouldn't be stupid perverted head-familiars, but should be rather more... holy. And non-perverted.

"_... and among the barzinoa, fair lady, who, if you remember our previous discussions on this topic, are the lesser souls of the mighty, wonderful, beautiful, fair, and not at all spiteful or horrifically acid, except in the best possible sense, Great Mother, the Sea Who Marched Against the Flame, Kimbery... counted among their numbers are the tarcalae, the Fisher-Children, who ultimately descend from Ululya, the Blood Red Moon._" The neomah paused. "_Can you please, with the greatest respect, stop staring up at the sky, my fair lady?_" she pleaded. "_It is illegally blue, and it is making me feel uneasy._"

'It just looks like it's going to be a nice day, today,' Louise thought back.

There was a noise of discomfort. "_Yes, but it's so... blue. And I'm having to... no, no, you are right, fair lady. But, yes. The tarcalae are most easy to identify, my lady, for from the back, they look like six-year old mortal children. That, however, is a most deceitful appearance, for from the front, one cannot but help notice that they have no lower jaw, and instead they have two coiled up tongues, each twenty metres in length. Their skin, too, from the front can be seen to be made of coral, and it can vary in hue from white, to brick-red, to a green which brings to mind the light of Ligier. Now, they are interested in the services of the ne..._"

Louise leaned forwards, paying more attention to the world around her. 'Ah,' she thought. 'We're almost there. Look, there's Bruxelles!'

Through the window, coming into view from behind the hill known as Marie's Blessing, under a pall of smoke was the city. From this slightly elevated position, the slums and townships of the settlements built outside the walls, sprawling and enveloping the city on the plains of Tristain. The poverty could be seen, for they were built in wood and brick. Indeed, to the north of the city, a thicker black pall rising to the heavens marked a fire. They clustered around the grey and solemn outer walls of the city, and the River Senne like children around a mother's skirts, and yet were not permitted access. Within the walls, building standards were at least somewhat maintained, and though the tenements and houses would often rise perilously to three, even four or more stories, the tallest ones were built by proper earth mages, in stone, and so stood as islands of wealth and taste within a sea of commoner constructions. This was the city of Bruxlles proper, the capital of Tristain, but compared to the city within the inner walls, where the true nobility and the wealthiest of the _inexprimé _houses had their holdings, its commoner-borne poverty showed through.

The inner walls were notably taller and better maintained than the outer ones, and sheathed in marble, rather than grey stone. Despite that, even from this distance the soot and rain streaks on the inner walls were distinctive, taking away some of the gleam that the builders had intended. And this theme continued, for despite the fact that it was built on the expanded-by-Earth-magic island in the River Senne where Brimir himself was said to have set up camp, the inner city was newer, dating back to only a hundred or so years ago. Several kings and queens had spent a lot of time, and money rebuilding the oldest city into a place of wide boulevards and marble. The cathedrals and churches and palaces were seemless constructs, earth mages raising them from the ground and building them without mortar, giving them a strength and beauty than no commoner-built structure could have had. Yet, even there, the organic growth of cities could be seen, for some of the widest of the streets now had buildings encroaching on them, narrowing them, and in some cases whole new buildings had been built in the middle of grand promenades. The palace dwelt in the precise centre, and stood almost as a city to itself, for in less peaceful, though more prosperous times Bruxelles had been the regional capital and stalwart against the Gallians, and the palace still showed its roots as a military fortification, even though it had been gentrified. In total, maybe two hundred thousand souls called this city home, not to count the slums and townships that surrounded it.

"_Mmm..._" Marisalon said. "_So, where's the city? Is it behind that hill over there? Or... aha! Of course, it must expand a long way below the surface town!_"

'No,' Louise thought, mildly insulted, 'that's it.'

A pause. Then; "_So it has folded realms into Elsewhere within?_"

'No. That's Bruxelles."

Another pause. "_Are you sure?_"

'Yes,' the girl thought, with growing irritation. 'Quite sure.'

The noise in the coach was growing louder, as the other students began to grow restless. "_Well, that's not much of a city,_" was Marisalon's measured opinion. "_Maybe for some backwards nation in the Scavenger Lands or something, but the capital? Compared to the Imperial City of the Realm... or, of course The City, I must say that I have seen better._"

'Oh yeah.' Louise crossed her arms, and closed her eyes, to prevent the neomah from picking out any flaws with her nation's capital. 'What's so great about those places, then?'

"_Well, clearly, the glories of the City are so much better, for the City is the King, Malfeas..._"

Louise blushed at the mention of that name, her heart fluttering. 'Well, yes, clearly he's better than any lesser thing,' she thought, tenderly. The very mention of him, and his glory made her feel warm and fuzzy and... made her want to giggle, for some reason. 'But... I can't see how any so-called Imperial City could be better.'

"_Well, let me begin, if you will. This, of course, fairest lady, is no attack on you and your tastes, and is merely a list of a few civic improvements which may be made if, so you wish, you achieve complete and utter control of this polity, you can construct a superior monument to the grandeur of the rightful rulers of the universe, and, of course, yourself. Well, first off, the geomancy of the city is frankly ugly. Where is the proper design for such things? It's like people have been, in a most inelegant way, simply building where they feel like it, which is terrible gauche and..._"

The coach rattled through the outskirts, along the main roads, and across the earth-mage made bridges to the inner parts of the city.

"_... and another thing! There's nowhere near enough music. How are you meant to ward off the Silent Wind with such shameful quietness! With bells of silver, and..._"

Louise was by now staring rather vacantly out the window. Some of these things seemed... impossible. Massive towers that scraped the sky made of of glass, or brass, or basalt, or marble, or jade or... she shook her head. 'Are you telling the truth?' she mentally asked the neomah.

"_Fair lady, of course! With no more than acceptable levels of poetic licence!_"

But something else had caught Louise's eye, as the coach pulled to a stop. 'You see that stall over there?' she asked. 'If I buy some fruit, and eat it, will you be quieter?'

"_... nice fruit?_"

Walking away from the stand, biting into an apple, Louise had to admit that it was pretty nice. Not as nice as the ecstatic and rather disturbing sounds that the neomah was making would suggest, but then again, it had been a while since breakfast.

The dark-haired man, gangly and in his early twenties at the market stall by the gates tilted his head slightly, and nodded. Looking down, he scribbled a few ideograms on a piece of parchment, before folding it up, and marking it with a thumbprint.

"Marie!" he called to the urchin that lounged in from of his stall, a prepubescent child swathed in tied-up adult's clothing. "Take this to the Charming Fairies Inn, and bring back a reply, if they have one. An' I'll give you a shiny silver denier, yes?"

The little girl stared up at him, eyes flicking greedily to the stall. "Wanna carrot first," she said.

The older boy waved a finger at her, before picking one up, and chopping it in half. "Half now, half later," he said, handing it over with the message.

"'Kay!" the girl nodded, before running off down the street, into the crowd.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The white cloth which covered Montmorency's desk was stained in many colours. The coasters placed on it were burned and singed, in addition to the ever-present stains. Her blonde ringlets were tied back in a headscarf, to prevent her from leaning over and burning her hair on either the candle flame, used for testing the colour mixtures made when they burned, or the small brazier which was currently keeping a bowl of water on the boil. Her face was mostly covered by a soaked handkerchief, apart from her eyes.

The window was wide open, and there were multiple buckets of water around to dump on anything that got out of control.

At this present moment, Montmorency Margarita la Fère de Montmorency was crushing rosebuds in a mortar and pestle, while something effervesced in a bowl floating in the bowl of boiling water. And she was singing to herself. "Twirl the princess's wand," she sang, voice muffled by the wet handkerchief, "... nah nah nahnahnah nah the land of magic. Twirl that magical wand, and I'm pleased to meet you, nahnah nah."

There was a rapping at her door, which she ignored, instead choosing to pour something blue-coloured into the mashed-up rose buds, and nodding, as small flecks of copper formed in it. "Lightning, sweep, exterm..." the knocking came again, and she sighed. "Who is it?" she asked, dipping a twig in the mess in the mortar and pestle, and frowning when she noted that it was still burning blue-green. More rose-buds were added, and the mashing continued.

"Who? Who else, but I, your most humble and handsome servant, Guiche de Gramont!" responded a florid and extravagant male voice. "Come to seek your most beautiful, most humble forgiveness! Again. After the last few times."

Montmorency glanced at herself in the mirror. The people who bought perfumes and other... helps from her never grasped how much hard work and unpleasantness went into actually making these things. She certainly didn't feel beautiful right now – as opposed to sweaty, her eyes watering, but then again, the tales of beautiful evil witches brewing their potions naked around cauldrons were just that, tales. And stupid tales at that. Even at a young age, when she was only getting started on alchemy, the blonde had already been of the opinion that anyone who was willing to have long hair and be naked near any kind of boiling liquid over an open flame deserved all the burns and poisoning that came to them. The kind of person who wrote that thing had probably never been near a potion which wasn't bottled and for sale. And was probably a man.

Wait. No, certainly a man.

"Go away, Guiche! I'm still angry at you!"

"But, my dear! My sweet! My Monmon!"

An unfortunate rosebud got crushed rather more than needed, as the blonde's knuckles whitened. "_I am not yours._" She paused. "And you can't call me 'Monmon'. You don't have the _right_!"

"But my dearest one! I come bearing gifts! And promises of eternal servitude. I realise that I have sinned, fair rose, and that I am but weak, cursed, possibly by an evil fairy, to search endlessly for beauty, despite the fact that you are like the rose, the most beautiful of all the flowers."

The blonde wiped her brow on her sleeve, and put her mortar and pestle down. She certainly didn't want to let him in when she was like. And she needed to get these potions made today, or else the reagents would go off.

She relented, somewhat.

"You can't come in!" she ordered him, "but you _can_ praise me through the door."

"But, my beloved..."

"Guiche, you're not coming in. I... I don't want to see you after how you... broke the last set of oaths you made! Now..." she thought, "yes, it's going to be harder to win me back."

"Like a challenge!" the boy responded immediately. "Of course, my rosebud! I shall best any quest you set of me! For you are like the rose, but... um, less prickly, and your eyes are like... limpid pools and..."

* * *

{0}

* * *

In her head, Louise did a quick calculation of how much money she had left in her term's allowance. She certainly didn't want to be too profligate...

"_Indeed, fairest lady, that is a most wise consideration. As a key point among your profound and righteous mission, might you not consider the virtues of an independent stream of income?_"

Propping the Staff against her shoulder, Louise leant against a nearby wall, letting her eyes drift up to the sky, to stare at the fluffy white clouds high above the smoke of the city. "Hmm," she said out loud. 'That's actually pretty sensible,' she thought. 'More money would be nice.'

"_And, incidentally, have you considered acquiring some more weapons, my fair lady? It would be best for you to familiarise yourself with the many and diverse styles of combat which you, as one of the chosen princesses of the King himself, are now naturally the finest at?_" The neomah hummed a short melody. "_Aha! A place with a bronze sign of a sword on the door! Let us go browse their catalogues, and then demand discounts when they fail to live up to the expected standards of one of the Brass Tigers!_"

'Ah...' Louise let out a nervous chuckle, and then flinched. 'I think I'd rather learn how to use this,' she bounced her glaive on her shoulder, 'first. And it's not like anything else would be... well, as pretty, as this.'

"_Most true, my lady, most true. Now, let us talk about jewellery. I think you should look for earrings, first. By getting some nice chiming ones, you can both be the centre of attention, so that others can recognise your glory and pay attention to you, and also contribute to defences against the Silent Wind..._"

* * *

{0}

* * *

The sun was high, shining directly down on the forest near the Academy, and the enclosure and barn recently erected beside it. Despite the appearance of the structure, it did, in fact, contain any of the large and varied arrays of livestock owned by the Academy. However, from the spit-roast in front of it, upon which a partially consumed cow was impaled, whatever lived there was a predator.

The blue-haired girl with eyes the colour of the midday sky looked at the jar of oil in her right hand. And the oil-stained rag in her left hand. With completely silent footsteps, she made her way into the barn, only to immediately step sideways as a large, blue-scaled, white-bellied beast with emerald like eyes came rushing out. It turned, immediately, and gave Tabitha a lick which left her dripping with saliva.

"..." Tabitha did not say, although the slight upturn of the corner of her mouth suggested that she was pleased to see her familiar.

Tabitha gestured, the dragon bounded in an almost puppy-like manner, if puppies were giant winged lizard-things, over to the partially consumed cow, and rolled over, positioning its head as to be able to chew idly on the meat. Dipping the rag in the oil, the girl climbed up on top of the dragon, and began to oil her underbelly, taking specific care over the still-injured areas where the spikes from Fouquet's golem had injured her familiar.

The dragon cooed, and wriggled, clearly enjoying itself, and Tabitha smiled faintly.

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was as she headed off the grand boulevards, and into the tighter streets, cutting through to another set of markets, than it happened. And it took Marisalon to warn her that she wasn't paying attention before she noticed, because... well, she wasn't paying attention.

It was quiet. Too quiet. The street, which was really more of an alleyway, was abandoned, save for the men lurking around. They were not nice men. They were muscular, with that certain build that came from hard manual labour now partially eroded away by alcohol. The tattoos visible on the bare arms of some of them indicated that they were formerly of the Tristainain Sky Navy, but others were wearing the heavy leather aprons of butchers or blacksmiths. And there were perhaps ten to fifteen of them, standing in this street which maybe six men could walk abreast in, the scent of poor sanitation and cheap booze wafting in from the inn in front of her.

This was not a _good _place.

"_I count eleven,_" Marisalon said, her voice clinical, no longer lilting. "_My lady, they have ill intent._"

Louise felt that she probably didn't need the neomah to point that out to her. The way they had moved to cut off her exit, and that she was a single, petite noble girl was quite enough of an indication of hostility, in her opinion. Clutching the Staff of Destruction tight, still bound in its leather wrappings, she carefully shifted into the simplest of the training positions she had picked up in the past two weeks, and took a deep breath.

"_Remember, fair lady, you cannot dodge them if you do not know they are coming,_" Marisalon stated. "_From my experience in the City, you would have been best to surrender when you were a mere mortal. But now you are a Princess of the Green Sun. Kill a few, and they will no doubt flee._"

Those words were enough to return a bit of free thought to Louise. Killing? "I... I am trying to pass here," she managed, a little shriller than normal. "Pl-please get out of the way!" Inwardly, she cursed the stammer and hesitation. They were just commoners! They shouldn't be making her feel scared.

One of them, a square-jawed man with a shaven head stepped forwards, the splat of his foot in a puddle a noise above the muted sounds of the city. "No," he said, flatly, before his voice took on an almost-insinuating, oily tone. "Well, look, my lady," he said in Low Tristainian, the words of respect dripping with irony, "spare some money for some poor out-of-work men down on their luck?"

"We got kids to feed," another one added. "Kids an' wives."

"An', really," a third one added, his mouth concealed by the great big bushy beard that could probably hide a blackbird "nobles like you are why we ain't got no jobs. You go keep makin' serfs an' not hirin'," he spread his arms wide, "... honest day labourers like us! Down with serfs an' stuff, I say, so you'd gotta pay a man."

Louise's eyes flicked from man to man, as they moved in. They had knives, too, or cudgels, and they were big and she was alone and _why was no-one else here?_

"Not so hard, really," said the bald one. "I mean, we just want money, an' you nobles are rollin' in your écus."

And that was a lie, the cold hardness in Louise's head told her. She barely needed Marisalon's prompting to lash out with ostentatious force, bringing the Staff's bottom in a half-circle into his ribcage. The cracking noise that resulted was not too unlike the sound of an egg-shell breaking. And then she was back into her guarding position, thankful that her head-familiar, for all that it was a perverted idiot, had forced her to practice. As soon as they wanted more than money... she was a noble girl, alone. And her mother had taught her what the right and proper response was, should a proper Tristainain lady be put in such a threatening and potentially dangerous situation.

Brute, uncompromising force.

"Go!" she roared at them, spinning to face them, emptying her lungs with her fury. Before her, the bald man wheezed, his panted breath liquid as he gasped in agony. "Leave me alone!"

Some ran. Above her, in the nested crooks of the alleyway, the birds scattered, while from the corners cats shrieked and fled from her presence,

Some didn't, as, with various battlecries of revenge, rather than greed, which echoed in the narrow street, they charged in.

"_Two left, one with a knife, take him out first_," Marisalon advised. "_Isolate, overkill, eliminate._"

Spinning to her left, Louise lunged with the butt of the Staff with all her strength, catching a man in the hip and sending him collapsing to the ground. That left her overbalanced, however, and as she tried to recover from the overextension, his companion swung a heavy wooden cudgel at her head. This would have been rather more of a threat, had she not been remarkably closer to the ground than his usual opponents, and this the blow was on the high side, dodged, by throwing herself lower.

Like a coiled spring, Louise de la Vallière unfolded into that assailant, leading with her shoulder, and sending him staggering back. With both hands he tried to seize her in a bone-crushing bear hug, only for his arms to meet on nothing but sand, as the pink-haired girl he was trying to grapple passed _through_ him, and he fell forwards into a puddle of waste with a rather unsanitary splash. That might have been enough to persuade him not to get back up, but just in case, Louise followed it up with a solid stamp on the kidneys of the prone man.

"I said, leave!" she commanded them, gesturing with her polearm. "What are you, stupid! Look what happens if you try to touch a noble like that!"

But they did not leave, the remainder, and that bought up certain flickering of suspicions, from a deep, unknown part of Louise's brain that she was pretty sure shouldn't exist. These are someone's pawns, it told her. They're not after money, or, at the very least, they'll only take the money off your body.

"_Maybe they're after your Staff of Destruction,_" Marisalon suggested. "_Fair lady, if my estimate is correct, it is of almost incalculable value. Though... hmm, who would send such base and unskilled thugs? A testing probe? Or maybe they found out themselves, via drunken employees of the Academy? Hmm. Indeed, a question of..._" and that was about all that Louise could listen to, as the muscular men advanced again. There were people at the other end of the street, she could see, behind them, but whether they were the Tristainain mob watching free street entertainment, reinforcements for her foes, or someone who would actually be of some help at all, she was not sure.

Checking behind her, she gave way, trying to get to an area where there were more honest civilians around, someone who could interfere, anyone. With a high block, she caught a cut on the shaft of the Staff, which cut through some of the bindings but bounced off the metal with surprising force. Up close, she couldn't swing it properly, and instead kicked the man in the shin as hard as she could. The momentary flare of green fire and the sudden shriek of agony as he dropped to the floor was enough to persuade him that he was incapacitated.

"_They're after you,_" Marisalon remarked. "_No one would be as foolish to keep on attacking like this when you've proven you can trivially incapacitate them._" She paused. "_On the other hand, the Staff is worth a lot of... look right!_"

The light glinted off the grease-smeared butcher's blade, more akin to a machete than anything which could be called a knife, and Louise squeaked in terror. The cut was fast, and she barely managed to get her spear's blade in the way in time, the blow numbing her fingers, and she leapt backwards rather than try to block again. It was stupid that a large man with a knife was scaring her like this when she had fought Fouquet's golem like that, but this was different! It was... and it was at that moment when the fact that she was thinking rather than actually reacting to what was going on caused a problem, because her last step back took her onto a slick area of the alleyway, and she fell backwards, her bottom hitting the ground heavily.

The man chuckled, darkly, and took another step towards her, as she tried to scramble backwards, getting the filth that littered this place all over the back of her skirt and legs. From down here, he looked even bigger, and the machete-like blade looked like it could cut her in half.

Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière threw out a hand, and the walls of the alleyway erupted inwards, each tiny granule of silver sand flayed from the structure surrounded by a corona of green flame. The brute had a fraction of a second to flinch, moving to block with ineffectual instincts, before the incoming blasts slammed into him and the stench of the alley was joined by blood and cooked meat.

Globules of molten glass cascaded down, as the man swayed for a few seconds, cooling in mid-air to produce a noise like rain or hail as they pattered down upon the floor of the alley, steaming. The clatter of the butcher's blade was almost lost among its wielder's screams, his leather apron torn to shreds, exposing the glass-embedded charred meat of his torso. The sound of his agony was only broken by his gasps for air, as he backed away, falling backwards himself only to bring further pain.

The girl stared in shocked horror at the effect she had produced. She... hadn't expected it to look like that. She hadn't expected him to get burnt like that, or for it to smell like... like pork and the height of summer. Her gazed darted to each of the other attackers who weren't already on the floor, and each of them backed away. After a moment's thought, she remembered that she still had her hand outstretched, her index finger pointing at each of them in turn.

She considered lowering it. She decided not to, despite how it was shaking. They... they had all attacked _her_. A bunch of brutish _peasants_ with _knives_. She had been scared, and it was their turn to be as scared as possible, so they'd _never_ think of doing that again. Ever.

"Go _away_!" she yelled instead, putting all her breath into that single command. "Just... go _away_!"

One made the mistake of stepping forwards, weapon still raised. This time, there was no fire, but only lacerating silver sand, howling like a dust-devil as it cascaded forth from the air around her hand, which folded and warped and bent, the finger retracting to timelike infinity. The man managed to get his hands over his eyes, dropping the heavy cudgel in his hands to do so, but as the glimmering, glittering silver drifted down to the floor it was weighted by red droplets, and another agonised scream joined the wails of the charred man on the floor and the bruised and battered masses.

The rest fled, often dragging their less injured companions with them. Nevertheless, as she pulled herself to her feet, the ground was littered with bodies, groaning and screaming in their own personal little worlds of pain. There was a scent of blood here, a sharp, metallic undertang to the less clean smell of the place, and she suddenly sagged in shock, clasping onto the Staff, the only thing keeping her upright. Hobbling slightly, for her leg ached from where she had fallen, Louise made her way away from the battleground, feeling numb.

A clatter of clogs behind her, and she whirled, polearm held to guard despite her slumped posture. The peasant girl, hair tied back in a headscarf squeaked, and backed away, half bowed in a submissive position. Seeing that, Louise slumped back down.

"Wh-what happened?" the peasant stammered, "... uh, my lady?" She flicked her eyes from left to right, half turning to glance at the fallen figures. "I... are you hurt? Please? Let me help."

Louise forced herself to straighten up, to be still, and not shake. "I will b-be fine," she forced herself to say. One was never meant to show weakness in front of the lower classes. "Indeed, I am fine. Completely fine. Thank you for the offer," she said, with forced magnanimousness, "but I will be... am fine."

"Oh, but you poor little girl..."

That, as it happens, was precisely the wrong thing to say. "I am not a 'little girl'," Louise stated, with the kind of forced, clipped calmness only comes in the depths of fury. "I doubt that you are much older than me, and you are a peasant, so address me with _respect_. Now," and she cleared her throat, hefting the Staff of Destruction onto her shoulder, "if you will excuse me, _peasant_..."

Clearly, her jaw squared, she turned and marched away from the other girl.

Jessica shook her head, and sighed, as she picked her way through the filth of the alleyway. That could have gone better. And then she tilted her head, nostrils flaring. That smell... and what was this? Bending down, stepping over the groaning bodies of the people who one of her cousins had paid an hour or two ago, she found silver sand, splattered with blood, on the floor, on top of the detritus which naturally accumulated there. It wasn't limestone, or even ground up marble; letting some cascade through her hand, she doubted that she'd ever seen it before. She pocketed another handful... that wasn't normal magic. Earth mages didn't just make rock like that, especially not funny silver sand. Was it actually silver? If it was, that was ridiculous, impossible. And further along, instead of sand... there was glass; tiny droplets of glass, each smaller than a denier, which crunched under foot.

The girl reached down to touch one, to see if it was really real, but the heat radiating off it was enough to ward her off. And all around, the walls were subtly eroded, something she could only see from where fresh brickwork had been revealed from under age-painted muck.

Behind her, a man pulled himself to his feet, his face a mess of flayed flesh, one eyesocket ruptured, a hand clamped over the other. Jessica shuddered from the face of horror, and backed away, going for the knife she always kept in her skirts, but he didn't seem to see her, and he slumped back down, whimpering.

A lock of her dark hair fell out of her headscarf, and Jessica idly started to chew on it, before realising what she was doing. With a frown, she spat it out. She only did it when she was nervous, the Dragons knew. And now they had more evidence to support the reports her cousin, Siesta, had been providing from the Academy, on the presence of one of the anathema, and she had observed some of its powers. They were... unlike... the tales her grandfather had told her, though more data was always necessary, and it was clearly not the act of a normal mage.

But this was bad news. It would have been much better, and cleaner for everyone if the thugs had worked, or that arrogant little noble brat had come with her. She would need to get back to the inn to talk and note this failure.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The voice in her head had a mix of concern and petulance. "_Are you quite sure that you wished to turn down such a generous offer, my fair lady?_" Marisalon asked. "_Quite apart from her attractiveness, you do have some of the... less pleasant offerings from that alleyway on you._"

Louise leant against the whitewashed wall, breathing deeply. "I'm..." she gasped, out loud, "I'm... I'm fine." She swallowed. "I don't know why I'm p-panicking more about that...those men than about the fact I got... th-things on me. I... I had every right to defend myself and... and... and Mother wouldn't have hesitated, and..."

"_Hmm._" The words were precise and measured. "_You are as yet unblooded, my lady, are you not? Unlike the dynasts of the Scarlet Empire, you have not been raised with the expectation of violence, least of all against your fellow man._"

"Hah!" Lousie said that, rather than laugh. "No, my mother expected violence. But..."

"_But the golem-construct was a mere construct; destroying it was like destroying a statue to you, yes?_"

The girl turned around, to stare up at the clouds, leaning back. That... was probably not inaccurate, she had to admit. They had been scum, filth, the worst kind of gutter peasantry who had dared to not only attack a noble, but one who was young and... she suddenly went sheet-white, slumping back as she realised what would have happened if something like that had happened a month ago. She would have been... completely and utterly vulnerable. She would have been unable to defend herself against being killed or... w-worse.

She rubbed her forehead against her sleeve, but it was as dry as it always was. 'Yes,' she thought, hating how weak she felt. 'Am... am I a bad noble?' she mentally asked. 'We... w-we have to always be strong, and able to defend ourselves and our lands, because that's our God-given duty. But... I... I froze up and... and...'

"_Violence is hard, at first,_" Marisalon said, gently. "_I am of the neomah. We are not made to be killers. But we need to learn to survive in the City, and though that never happened to me, these are those who bind and summon us for that, though we choose to do that not. And that, my fairest princess of the green sun, is something that you will need to learn, for your life and your task in the name of the Creators is vital. They were going to kill you, were they not? Do worse things to you, __maybe? Were you not right to fight back? Did you note act to spare them, by not using the blade of your magnificent staff upon them?_"

Louise bit on her lip. "Yes," she muttered. "But... the way his flesh... the glass and the heat and..." she gagged, gasping for breath. "It smelt... like pork," she managed, closing her eyes.

"_Hmm... not quite..._"

The girl's nostrils flared. "Shut up!" she blurted out, out loud, drawing quite a few stares from various passers-by. Some of them seemed sympathetic, for here was a clearly noble girl, somewhat distressed looking.

The neomah's voice, when it responded, was oily. "_My mistress fair, please calm down. Do not let your distress overwhelm you. You are fair, and you are clearly upset, and for this you show the endless bounty of your generous heart, that you would feel upset about meaningless serfs such as those men. Remember, first, that they attacked you, and second, that as a princess of the green sun, you are so far beyond them that to even let them see your face is a mercy. They are ugly, brutish, and little more than eryamanthoi in human form; you transcend them, through your learning and kindness._"

Louise swallowed, shaking slightly. "I... I do," she muttered to herself, before sniffing; an act which bought some of the scent of the filth from the alley into her nostrils. "And... and I need to get cleaned off. Or some new clothes. Y-y-yes... some new clothes. This is... dirty." She shuddered, at the specks of red on it. "I... I don't want to be wearing these. Anymore."

And so, prompted by the neomah, which continued to try to reassure and comfort her, the girl made her way to the fabrics markets and the clothiers. The places where the nobles shopped were quite distinct from where the commoners made their purchases. One of the major differences were the prices. While the commoners paid in deniers and sous, the prices which nobles paid were in écus. The filth and soot of the poorer parts of the city were absent, too; magical lighting removed the need for dirty torches, while small marble blocks placed at regular intervals cleansed the air of the scent of the city.

"_Now, this is more like it,_" Marisalon remarked, happily. "_My lady, I misjudged the level of your civilisation. To take such wise precautions shows that you are indeed rather more urbane than I might have first thought._"

Louise managed a watery smile, and looked around the brightly coloured stalls, searching for one of the more upmarket shops which would allow her to talk to the proprietor and explain properly what she wanted. Maybe... yes. Yes, she had been to that place before, and had even conversed with the owner. She would offer her a drink, let her sit down, help her select things and get dressed; all the proper things one should do when getting served. The woman had the de la Vallière seal up, obvious, in a discretely tactful way, and therefore could be counted on to be reliable, honest, and fair... at least in her dealings with Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière.

And, really, that was what mattered.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Fingers smeared with ink, Miss Emmanuelle Leterme made another note in the margins, and swung her compass over to connect the two stars in an arc. Leaning back, she squinted at the diagram of intersecting arcs, lines and polygons that she had created over the records of the stars from that night, and frowned. It still wasn't making any sense.

Somewhere in the distance, the school bells chimed for the fifth hour since noon, and the dark-haired woman pursed her lips. She was getting hungry, and... yes. With a wave of her wand, and a squinting, muttered incantation, she heated the water in the basin she kept besides her workbench, and dipped her hands in, letting the warmth sink into her stiff-feeling fingers. The water bled to dark blue as she started scrubbing off the ink, leaving her pale skin reddened. Reaching for a handcloth, she dried off, and then began to strip off her shirt, something more appropriate for a man than a respectable woman. If she was staying in her room, working on star charts, she could look how she liked, but outside, she had to be more respectable.

Pulling a light blue dress from her wardrobe, she rested it down on her bed, and paused, as she pulled off her breaches, checking that her mantle was clean.

Dark locks fell down in front of her face, as she drifted over, back to her charts. Muttering to herself, she checked the numbers scrawled down, and, clad only in her corset and bloomers, wandered over to her log books to cross-reference the tables. Yes, she thought, that matched. As far as her maths was correct, and her diagrams were correctly corresponded, she could see no flaws. Connecting the pentarchal aspect of the Knight Errant to the rising aspect of the Shattered Lady, and then... she reached for a quill, toying with it... no, the Regretful Oath should not be having an influence, considering the tertiary predominance of the Fearful Heart.

It just didn't make sense. According to the stars, Fouquet of the Crumbling Dirt was already captured, although the proximity of the Ring, Water-as-Dynamism, suggested a possibility that she might escape or be released. But... she – and that information that she was female had been one of the things limiting astrological readings in her before, though it would be better to know her real name – had escaped. And people would _know _if such a criminal had been captured at all.

Miss Emmanuelle Leterme sighed. It didn't make sense... but, then again, reading the stars was hard. It was possible that this was just an unknown conjugation producing anomalies in what the stars said to what was read. Certainly, she'd need a lot more evidence before she could report it back to the observatories of Versailles or – and how she hoped they would survive the civil war – Greenwich. The problem was clearly at her end. She sighed again, and began to put on the dress.

The mouse watching from the carefully placed hole also sighed, as did its master, sitting in his office. Headmaster Osmond had been rather enjoying the view. The fact that she was having problems with the astrological divinations he had asked her to do was also interesting, and he stored that memory for later consideration, but... ah. Such was life.

When you were his age, it was best to make the most of what was left.

* * *

{0}

* * *

New garments in the trunks under the seats, Louise was still quiet on the way back, though the shaking had long since stopped. Her justifications, and the flattery of the neomah, were enough to calm her down, and she had decided that her actions were justified. After all, it wasn't like she had killed any of them. Indeed, given that she had had the chance – as, after all, the blade on the Staff of the Destruction was wickedly sharp – the fact that she had not, even when provoked, and had merely inflicted pain with sand... that meant she was a good person, right? Kind and compassionate.

And that was what Mother would have done.

Nevertheless, she felt, as she arrived back at the Academy, that it would be better to go straight to her room, to have a lie down, and a think. New clothing draped over her arm, wearing a new dress which just happened to look the same as the one which had got dirtied, she unlocked her door, and stepped in.

The young lady sitting on her bed, perhaps a year or two older than her, smiled broadly. "Louise Françoise," she said, warmly. "It's been some time, hasn't it?"

"_Well, hello __there__, beautiful lady on our bed,_" Marisalon exulted, her mental voice singing out. "_Calibration comes early!_"

Louise was too speechless to even mentally command the neomah to be silent. She was speechless, because she simply fainted.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Louise Françoise! Louise Françoise! Are you alright?"

Louise groaned, and opened her eyes, to see concerned blue eyes hovering close above her. Wincing, she realised that she was lying on the floor, and groaned again.

"_Kiss her!_"

"No!" Louise blinked heavily, as she realised that she had said that out loud, and winced. "I... I m-mean, my pr-pr-princess, I'm... fine." She swallowed deeply, and wet her lips with her tongue. "Just... you j-just surprised me."

Princess Henrietta, heir to the throne of Tristain – and only uncrowned due to her age of minority, her mother serving as regent – gazed down at her old friend, and giggled. "I suppose I did sort of break into your room," she said, smiling. "How you've grown, too! It's been years! But if I'd told people, then there would have been a _fuss_, and then I couldn't have snuck in to see you, and... and Agnes, you don't need to keep your pistol out like that," she said to the scarred older woman, who had apparently been lurking by the wall.

"It is my duty to keep you safe, my Princess," the woman, dressed in the uniform of a musketeer, said. Louise stared at her, and then tried not to look like she was staring, because the woman's face was covered in a mesh of scars, crossing at right angles, like a cross-hatched sketch in pink and sickly white. When she spoke, her face barely moved, but her oddly-shaped eyes, a bright sea-green, flicked constantly around the room, never resting in one place for too long. Compared to the spectacle of her face, her boyishly-cut red-blonde hair was an after note.

Henrietta sighed. "This is Louise Françoise," she said, offering Louise her hand, and bringing her into a hug. "If I didn't trust her, who could I trust? Some of those maggots at court?" She snorted. "I think not."

"_Mmm..._"

Louise hugged her back, ignoring the noise in her head. "I've missed you so much," she responded. "Where've you been? Last thing I heard, you were visiting Germania." Her cheeks flushed. "Was it all right there? Were you eating properly? You can't trust the food there, you know." Her mind whirled. "And it honours me to see you coming to a humble place like this. Have you even been back to the Palace yet? When did you get back?"

"The day before yesterday," the other girl said. "I was going to have a larger procession, but by the end of it, I was just so exhausted that I had them cancel the stop by the Academy. The number of tours and processions and formalities in Germania quite wore me out. You'd think they'd just want to get the treaty negotiations over and done with. And, yes, I was very careful to make sure that I had both my own chefs and my food tasters," Henrietta told her seriously, before she grinned again. "It's not like Cardinal Marazin would let me get sick of food poisoning," she added, the corners of her mouth turning down. "Not with all those meetings and conferences. They went on _forever_."

"Ah?" Louise asked, guiding her over to her bed, and sitting her down, taking one hand. "My dear princess, such tedium, among all those Germanian barbarians."

"_Yes, yes, take her to bed! I had no idea that the Princess was such a beauty! That luscious hair, so silken and..._"

'Shutupshutup!' Louise thought furiously, 'or I will slam my head into... into the wall until it hurts! As soon as she's gone! I'll do it!' The pink-haired girl forced herself to relax, releasing the princess' hand, which she had been gripping a little too tightly, and tried to pick up the conversation. "I have a von Zerbst in my class and..." Louise made a forced disgusted noise.

"Louise, you don't need to call me 'my princess' all the time," the other girl said, with a suppressed sigh. "You can call me by name, remember? I gave you a royal warrant and everything!"

"I was five, and you just wrote it on my hand," Louise said, her lips creeping up. "And my mother told me off afterwards because I got ink on my dress because of you, and the nursemaid scrubbed my hand pink getting it off."

"It's still a valid royal warrant, because I marked it with a thumb print, using wax from that candle."

"Which hurt!"

"So, please," Henrietta continued, ignoring the interruption. "I get enough 'my princess'-ness from everyone else. Call me by my name, Louise Françoise."

"Soon it will be 'your majesty'," the pink-haired girl reminded her, slyly. "Will you have to reissue the warrant, Henrietta? Because I'd prefer to not have a burn on my hand from the wax."

The other girl giggled. "Depends whether you're naughty," she said.

"_Be naughty. Yes, very naughty!_"

'Head. Into wall. I'll do it.' Louise took a deep breath. "Everything's been very... confusing for me, lately," she admitted to her old friend, out loud. "I've..."

The older woman in the corner nodded, intruding. "The Palace is aware of the recent events at the Academy," she said.

"... thank you, Agnes," Henrietta said, bouncing slightly in the bed as she turned, "... but I was going to say that myself. Yes, Louise Françoise! Apparently you and some other girls managed to stop the dreadful Fouquet, from _completely _pillaging the Academy bare. While the Crown is, of course, disappointed, that anything could be stolen," she said, adopting a false air of pomposity, "... can I see it?"

"See what, my pri... Henrietta?"

"The Staff of Destruction, of course!" The princess beamed. "My father told me about it, back when he was... he told me about it, and apparently it's really beautiful."

"Of course." Louise stood up, and turned her back on Henrietta, heading over to where the Staff had fallen when she had. 'Listen to me, you stupid head-familiar,' she thought. 'This is Henrietta. She's my friend!'

"_And I like her greatly, my fairest of mistresses,_" was the response she got. "_Her lips are the beautiful crimson of the fur of an erymanthoi, her hair is beautiful beyond compare, and the sight of her eyes would be illegal under the laws of the Endless Desert. She is fair and powerful, and her seduction would be both pleasant and provide you with ample chances for power and pleasure. I can provide most eminently useful advice, for one of my former mistresses, Cyni..._"

Louise's face was flushed bright red by now, both hands covering her cheeks. It was only a small mercy that she was turned away from Henrietta. 'I... I... p-p-perverted head-demon!' she thought, feeling weak at the knees. 'She's my fr-friend and I owe her loyalty and... she's a girl!'

"_... your point is?_" Marisalon said, sounding mystified.

'Shut. Up.' Louise snatched at the Staff, yanking it up in a way which had the bodyguard, Agnes, with her sword half-way out of her scabbard. With a little more care, she deliberately took her time taking the leather covering off the top, partly because she was aware of just how sharp the jagged piece of crystal was, but also because it gave her a chance to get her expression under control before she faced her friend. 'Stupid, stupid perverted stupid head-familiars and their stupid perverted ways,' she grumbled mentally, as she unwrapped the bindings which kept the metal concealed.

Behind her, Henrietta moved to push Agnes' hand away from her weapon, before she gasped at the revelation of the Staff. "That... that really _is_ beautiful, Louise Françoise," she exhaled, staring at the polearm.

Like most people seeing it for the first time, she tilted her head from left to right, and watched the odd refracted sparkle of yellow and blue and red and green and purple, on the silver of its shaft. The main shaft of the treasure began low, flaring around the end, as if there was something missing there, to rise in delicately spiralling whorls that made the strange sparkling metal appear as if it had been grown into that shape. This impression only grew stronger, as it separated into five strands, which looped into an egg-sized receptacle before closing again, twisting, and forming a cradle for the crystal inset at the top. And the crystal... Henrietta blinked, and blinked again.

"Can... can I hold it?" she asked, softly.

"Oh, oh, of course!" Louise blurted out, holding the Staff of Destruction out. "But... um, it's a lot heavier for everyone apart from me, so you might want help because..."

"I doubt you're that much..." Henrietta let out a squeak, as she felt the weight, and Agnes rushed in before she could take an embarrassing fall. "How on earth do you make it look so light, Louise Françoise?" she asked, as Agnes, who was now supporting it, glared at Louise.

Louise stared back, a momentary green light flashing unnoticed in her eyes when she looked her friend and the musketeer, and she let out a slight smile. "The headmaster says it's the weapon doing it, not me," she explained with a shrug. "I don't understand it."

"_Ah, interesting. Interesting indeed. That princess, who is almost as fair as you are, is strong indeed,_" Marisalon said. _And that woman..._

'I know,' Louise thought. Now she had questions for Henrietta.

"Oh, you mean like the Derflinger, sword of the Gandalfr," Henrietta said brightly, unaware of the dialogue going on in her companion's head. "Well, that is... amazing." Letting Agnes take the weight, she stood on tiptoes to stare at the oddly asymmetric crystal which was either a blade, or a mage's focus. And she squeaked again, for the second time in less than a minute, as she saw a blossom-shape of colourless fire drift through the crystal, vanishing as if it was never there.

"The fire-light?" Louise said, in a tone which made the princess feel a little suspicious. "It happens. I... think it's magical of some sort."

"It certainly is!" Despite herself, Henrietta let out a shudder. There was something about this which seemed to be challenging her, a sensation which only got stronger when she touched the strange Staff. It was a feeling of... contempt. No, she thought, readjusting her thought, it didn't have this contemptuous disdain for _her_. It... it disliked her with a vehemence which could only not be called hate because of the patronising disdain, in her role as the princess of Tristain.

And then, suddenly the feeling was gone, leaving only a slightly oily feeling on her fingertips, as another blossom of colourless fire drifted petal-like across the blade. Narrowing her eyes, she let Louise take the Staff back, and prop it up in a corner. Despite the fact she was still feeling slightly odd, she still smiled, because her old friend's tendency to be less than meticulous was showing from the gouges in the wall where it had clearly been leant before. "Louise Françoise, forgive me," Henrietta began, "but much as I would have loved to merely talk to you... and I really would love to merely talk, I cannot." She sighed. That was true; she had been lonely since her father had died and she had been taken from the schooling she had expected to have to be privately tutored in the arts of monarchy which she so desperately needed, as well as her own magic. "Louise Françoise, I am here because I need your help."

On Louise's part, she at that point was having to drown out the excited speculations of what Princess Henrietta could want from the neomah in her skull, so she merely nodded, and said, "I am your loyal servant, and your friend, my pr... Henrietta."

"I know you are!" the other girl exclaimed, taking her hand. "You've kept my secrets before..."

"... I never did tell anyone that it was you who'd taken the meringue." Louise's eyes flicked over to Agnes. "Uh... she doesn't count, right?"

"... and I've kept yours." Henrietta sighed, pursing her lips. "My problem is that I have done something very, very silly, and I need a friend. I don't need a servant, or a vassal... I need someone I can trust who cares for me," she said, patting the bed besides her, inviting Louise to sit, and taking her hand.

Louise licked her lips. "... uh. Okay," she said, slowly, not quite sure of where this was going.

"_Do you think she is with child?_" Marisalon speculated.

That... was not impossible, Louise had to admit, from this line of approach.

Henrietta turned, to stare out the window, despite the fact she was still holding onto Louise's hand. "The truth is, why I was in Germania?" she began, speaking carefully. "I'm... I'm getting married."

"To... to whom?" Louise blurted out.

"The... the Emperor of Germania. Matthias I."

Louise's face turned as pink as her hair. "You... they can't make you do that, Henrietta!" she blurted out. "Make you marry some Germanian pig... I'm pretty sure he's ancient, in his forties! An ill-bred, barbarian warlord with no legitimacy and..."

"... I have to," Henrietta said, softly. "It's part of the treaty. It'll seal an alliance between us and Germania, and he's... he's not a complete barbarian. He's at least a mage." The expression on her face showed quite clearly how willing this would be, though. "It's not personal," she said. "I don't have to love him. I'm not a trophy bride; we'll be allies, not their inferiors. He'll only be Prince Consort, not King. He can stay in Germania and I'll stay here and I'll provide him with an heir and..." Henrietta began to sniffle.

Louise didn't hesitate, but instead pulled her hands free of Henrietta's grasp and pulled her into a hug, the other girl's damp cheek resting on her shoulder.

"_Yaaaaaay!_."

'Shut up.' Louise's mental voice was burning cold. 'This is not the time.' Out loud, she said, forced joviality in her tone, "Well, at least they're not making you live in Germania. Uh. And... after all, it's all rightfully your territory anyway! Yes, the Germani stole it from you, my princess. Um. Uh." She hugged her friend tighter. "It'll be all right," she managed.

Henrietta unfolded herself, and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief which had appeared from a sleeve. "That's what the problem is," she told Louise, in a coldly intense voice, her tears not audible. "Because this alliance is vital. The Germanians are expanding to the east, with several Otmani nations already having fallen to them. Their armies are much, much larger, and better trained, and they have combat experience. Even our higher number of mages won't be enough. And our old alliances with Albion won't hold; in fact, worse."

"_Logical,_" the neomah said, with a mental shrug. "_Weak powers align themselves with stronger ones. It's how everything works. And if this Germania is a new power rising in the east, well... you might want to look towards them as possible assets, once you have most ingeniously acquired your own power-base._

Louise paled, as she focussed on her friend's words. "You mean the rebels have already w-won, in Albion?" she asked, hesitantly.

"I hope not, and I... I pray to God and Founder every night that they can keep on fighting. But from observers we have, the rebels have pushed the rightful forces of Albion to the north-east of the island; Londinium has already fallen. And this is terrible. Because... because, a few years ago, I did something stupid which is dangerous. And wrong. And not a princess's function."

Louise worked her jaw, her shoulder feeling rather damped. "What?"

"I can't tell you, you understand?" She wiped at her eyes again. "Before negotiations for the treaty started, of course. I'm not that foolish. But, still. You understand how vital this point is? That you never, never speak of this, or of what I am about to ask of you to anyone ever? Can you do this for me, Louise Françoise?"

The pink-haired girl nodded. "Of course, Henrietta! You don't even need to ask it of me! I will never tell another living soul of this."

"_Clearly, I don't count,_" Marisalon said, smugly.

'Shut it.'

Letting go to rest her hands on her lap, smoothing down her dress, Henrietta cleared her throat. "There are clearly those who oppose this marriage," she said, her voice soft. "I know that some of our nobility will hate it. After all, you reacted that way, Louise Françoise. And there will be opposition in Germania; the other prince-electors will oppose the increase in power of the Emperor, because... well, the Germanians aren't a proper Brimiric nation, so they don't rule by right of descent from Brimir. They have their independence... and they spread that kind of idea among other nobles, just by existing. But the Albionese traitors, the rebels, will also oppose it, because they know that we're the easy target compared to Gallia and Germania, and if they have any ambitions... and we're close to the Albionese royal family, so that makes us their enemies. And they're the ones in a position to... interfere," Henrietta explained, picking her words carefully.

"Why?" Louise asked.

"There is... a letter in the hands of the Prince Wales of Albion. If... if it is found, then the Albionese rebels will be able to... to ruin the treaty, in addition to having..." she swallowed. "If they are ever in a position to have their hands on it, they will already be victorious in Albion, and we will have lost that ally to the hand of traitors. I... I am afraid I must ask a favour of you, Louise Françoise, out of friendship rather than loyalty. I will be sending a mission to recover it, but officially, the mission exists to offer asylum to members of the Albionese royal family, and those among the nobility who remain loyal. But... if that does not work, I want...no, I _need_ someone loyal to me personally, to ensure that the letter is saved or destroyed. Someone who I can trust will not read it, who will never think to use it for their own _corrupt _political gain, and you, Louise Françoise, are the only person I can think of. And..." she sniffed, "that's a little sad, isn't it?"

"_Ooo~ooooh,_" Marisalon cheered, in a lilting tone. "_I smell an romance! How delightful and beautiful, young amorous affection! First love... unless she's even more of a prodigy than I could have hope to believe! And it shows that she is already open to such..._"

'Silence, perverted thing!' Although, considering the talk she had already had earlier today, and with that prompting... hmm. Louise stared at the princess through slightly hooded eyes. "Henrietta," she said, flatly, addressing her as she had when they were children, "what you did was fall in love with the Prince Wales, wasn't it?"

There was something which sounded remarkably like a snort from Agnes, who by now was seated on one of Louise's chairs, positioned so she could see both the door and the window.

"_So cute! The way that she's blushing is adorable! And my lady, you really should trust me more in these matters. I am most well informed of the concerns of the heart, and other related organs!_"

"It's not exactly subtle," Louise remarked, sympathetically. "And he was rather... cute, from what I can remember, though I was quite a bit younger when I was introduced to him. I remember seeing him at those parties we went to when..." she trailed off. "It was then, wasn't it!" she accused. "When you had me pretend to be you in your bed while you snuck off to do something! You were sneaking off to meet him!" Her cheeks were red. "I... you... I mean, it was a prince and a princess, so it's really romantic, but... you... that was wrong!"

Henrietta was likewise just as pink, and Agnes seemed to be repressing laughter, from the way her shoulders were shaking. "How did you..." The other girl swallowed, and began to suck on her lower lip in nervousness.

"_Why would it be wrong?_" Marisalon asked, clearly puzzled. "_Such things are indeed commonplace in the Dynasty, I know as much from the times I served, bound, at parties. What matter of a man or woman would care as long as no bastards exist to ruin the family sanguine lines?_"

'I already explained that to you! At length! There are such things as standards!'

"It was pure, beautiful love," Henrietta continued, face distraught, entirely unaware of the dialogue going on without her. "The purest kind. Untainted by... anything like that! And we both knew... and even when I wanted him, he said that it was foolish of me to even ask that of him, because it was unbecoming of a princess and that we should organise a marriage properly. And then the civil war started, and..." she let out a shuddering sigh, and dabbed at her eyes again. "I'm... you would be going into danger, Louise Françoise," she said. "Although Newcastle – that's where the true government was... is still holding out..."

"At least according to the last dispatches, from ten days ago," Agnes interjected.

"... yes, but they will be holding out! They need to!" Henrietta closed her eyes, raising her head towards the glowing magical lights in the room. "No, I need to look at the world as it is, not as it should be. That's why the ship will be a merchant ship, with a legitimate cargo; if Newcastle has already fallen, it will sell its goods, and we must pray that God spares us all the challenges which will be to come. But the majority of the Albionese Royal Fleet has turned traitor, and the rebels control the shipyards at Port's Mouth and have since the start of the war. As traitors, they'll no doubt be a bunch of brigands and thieves, and probably will target perfectly innocent merchants. And then there's the danger of brigands, and of travel, and... oh, when I say it like that, I worry more and more that what I am asking of you is not acceptable."

"I see," Louise said. "But... Your Highness," she said, dropping into formality, "Be it the deepest depths of the lands of the elves, or into the jaws of a dragon, if it's for Your Highness' sake, I'll go anywhere! There is no way the third daughter of the House of la Vallière, Louise Françoise, guardian of the Staff of Destruction, could overlook such a crisis for Her Highness and Tristain!"

"_Of course, such loyalty is rewarded generously, I hope. And... my fairest lady, it was most cunning how you give her the impression that you are as vulnerable as a normal mage, when even now, I doubt there is much that one of your rather pathetic native dragons could do to you. I mean, they're little more than flying river dragons, and despite their elemental abilities, they are certainly not Elemental Dragons or... heh, indeed, they are not the Immac..._"

'Trying. To think here.' Louise coughed. "And you said that I would not even be going alone," she added.

"... yes," Henrietta managed, after such an ebullient pledge of allegiance, before blinking, and forcing a smile. "The commander of the expedition is the Knight-Commander of the Griffin Knights, Viscount Wardes, and..."

"My fiancé, yes," the pink-haired girl said. "He _is _the bravest man in the kingdom," she said, confidently.

"Quite so. He will have a squad of his finest with him. And," Henrietta nodded, "I will be adding to that. It would not be... proper to send you with all those men alone, so you will have chaperones."

"_Awww. No fun._"

"And by that," Agnes said, quite definitely, "she means four of the Royal Musketeers will be accompanying you, one dressed as a member of an _inexprimé _house, and the other three as servants. They will be there exclusively to protect you."

"And prevent your virtue from being sullied by unfair rumours," Henrietta hastened to add.

"_Oh. Well, they could be attractive, I suppose._"

Louise squared her jaw, and ignored the voice in her head. "I understand, Your Highness," she said, clearly. "When will I depart?"

"The expeditionary force will be passing by the Academy at around the third hour after sunrise," Agnes answered for Henrietta. "Viscount Wardes will collect you. Do so _subtly_. Take only what you need; my musketeers will provision for you. It is estimated, if all goes well, it will take no more than a week at maximum."

"I understand," Louise said, butterflies churning in her stomach at how fast this was all progressing.

"_Make sure you take this wondrous artefact with you, my fair lady_," Marisalon all but ordered her, something which, for once, Louise completely agreed with. "_You would be a fool to leave this Staff of Destruction behind, and you, my lady, are not a fool._"

"And one last thing," the princess said, standing, and taking a hooded cloak from the back of one of Louise's chairs. Reaching in with one pale hand, she withdrew a sealed parchment envelope. "Give this to... to the Prince Wales. Tell Char... tell him that it is from me. Take any answer he provides, and _make sure_you get my letter back. If possible, I would like it returned, but... if you are to be captured... and I will pray to Lord and Founder that you are not, destroy it." Sweeping her cloak on, she fastened the ties at the front, pulling a pair of dark gloves out of the pockets, before bringing Louise into a sweeping hug that enveloped the smaller girl. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she whispered into Louise's ear. "I... I knew you'd agree, my friend. I pray for your safe return."

And with that said, she hurried out of the room. Agnes followed her more slowly, turning back to stare at Louise, whose eyes glinted green momentarily. "Do _not_betray her trust," the woman with the criss-crossed scars said, voice soft.

Louise did not dignify that with an answer, but instead glared back, her back stiff as a ramrod. And then the older woman was gone, and she let herself sag back down onto her bed, lying flat stretched out, staring at the ceiling.

"Well," she said out loud. "That was..."

"_... interesting?_" Marisalon completed for her. "_Potentially advantageous? Or dangerous? Far too many things in your world are unfamiliar, and I don't know enough to advice you as I would like, though, of course, fair maiden, I serve you as best I can._

"Her companion," Louise said. "I checked. Again. Henrietta... she's a water mage, as I've always known, but that 'Agnes'? She was... hollow. Cold. Dark. She smelt of..." the girl smoothed down her coverings, where they had been mussed by being sat on, "... the way the air smells late at night. An equal, though. So the equivalent of a dot-class mage."

"_And why did you not sense for truth and lies in that, my fair lady?_" Marisalon chided her. "_She could have lied to you, and..._"

Louise closed her eyes. "She's my friend," she said, wearily. "But you don't understand friends, do you? Yes," she continued, with sudden force, as her own words suddenly rang true, "you don't understand friends. You understand masters and servants, and you understand... rutting, like some animal, but you don't understand friends and I don't think you understand love."

The answer when it came had unusual bitterness in it. "_There is no such thing as love without pain_," the neomah said, cynically. "_Rutting, as you so eloquently call it, is pleasurable, enjoyable, and allows the crafting of new life. It is an artform; the highest and most perfect of artforms, save dance. But love is only pain, for someone._"

"That's not true," the girl answered hotly, rolling over, to glare at her pillow. "Love is beautiful and wonderful and... and... and it's lovely!"

"_And it hurts._" The neomah let out a sigh. "_Take your princess. I'm sure that she thinks she loves this Prince Wales. But to turn down the pleasure of mating claiming love is higher than that? Foolish._"

Louise did not comment on the impression she had got that it had been _him_ turning _her_ down, and sat up, beginning to unfasten her outer layer of the new clothing. "Don't be so bitter and cynical and... and unromantic and perverted and annoying... actually, that! Stay quiet when I tell you I'm trying to concentrate! And no perverted lechery over my friends and Henrietta is one of my friends and she's the princess... and also stop being like... _that_ over girls! Girls don't like girls in _that _sort of way!"

There was a chuckle from the neomah, but no response.

"And anyway," Louise continued, "Viscount Wardes is leading the mission, and he's wonderful and brave and handsome and the Knight-Commander of the Griffin Knights, who are the best soldiers in the country. And he's _my_ fiancé, believe it or not." She jutted her chin out. "I'm sorry that whatever happened to you made a perverted cynic," she told the neomah, earnestly, "but you'll see that love can be real and proper when he's there." She folded her arms, as she pulled off her skirt, leaving her in only her undergarments and her – woefully underfilled, to her own continual disappointment – corset. "Now, I'm not going to spend more time explaining obvious things to a perverted head-familiar," she lectured the air, "because I'm going to bed. We're going to need a good night's rest."

"_Fairest lady, we only just got back from the trip into town, and we have not eaten yet. Would it not be best to head down to the kitchens... after first putting some more clothes on... and ensuring that we can have a nice, solid, healthy meal, with grapes, before your big trip tomorrow._"

"I said we're going to bed! It's your punishment for being an annoying perverted head-familiar when I was trying to talk to the princess! See how you like it."

"_My fairest lady_," Marisalon began, in an oily voice, as Louise finished changing into her nightgown, and began to tidy her new clothes away, "_that is not the wisest decision you could make, as you can well see. You need your strength._"

"I also need a head-familiar who doesn't letch after my friends and try to... imply _things_ about girls! You're just... just insolent and rude and perverted because I can't punish you like any other servant who was half as rude and perverted as you are would _rightfully_be punished!"

"_I could say I was sorry?_"

"You'd be lying. We're going to bed. Now. Once I finish tiding up. And clean my face. And a few other things. But no food!"

"_... well, clearly _someone's _feeling better! But are you? Maybe, my fair lady, you should be sure to eat to make sure that you have got over the shock from the violence? After all, being so kind and generous as to let them live must try even one as mighty as you..._

"Nuh uh! You're not getting around me that way!"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Leaning against the carriage window, watching the darkness outside go by, Princess Henrietta sighed, watching the dark night go by. Somewhere in the fields, there was a single burning torch isolated, and she sighed again. "Do you really think I had the right to ask that of her?" she asked the air.

"Yes," Agnes said flatly, hand resting on the hilt of her sword. "You are the princess, and you will be queen. She's one of your subjects."

Looking away from the window, Henrietta shook her head. "Not in that sense." Her hands, resting on her lap, balled into fists. "It's all my fault," she said, softly. "I shouldn't have to send my friend out like that, to Albion, where they're having a civil war. Especially when I haven't talked to her for years. And... and it's all my fault for getting in this mess in the first place. And... I don't want this marriage anyway," the princess said, eyes reddening. "I don't love him; I only met him for the first time in the treaty negotiations. And... that's just me being selfish."

Agnes stared at her silently.

"Oh, I know full well I'm being selfish!" Henrietta blurted out, to the unspoken thoughts. "My body isn't my own. I am the crown's, I am the state. It's my duty to marry the Germanian emperor. Even if he's old, and... we need this treaty. Better solve this now, because I've seen the projections, and Cardinal Marazin is right. This way, we have a partnership of equals, rather than be crushed under the Germanian boot, or taken as an a trophy of Albionese traitors because we lacked allies. Yes," Henrietta said, speaking only to reassure herself now, "we need this, and my feelings don't matter."

"She's not a mage. Nor is she a commoner," Agnes said.

Henrietta blinked. "What?"

"Louise Françoise, as you call her, is neither a mage, nor a commoner, nor indeed a spirit." Agnes tilted her head. "I don't know what she is. I've never seen anything like her before."

The princess pursed her lips tight, pale fingers tapping against the glass of the carriage window. "Are you sure?" she asked, unnecessarily. Agnes was not wrong about these things. Ever.

"Yes. She is not a commoner, though; she has power akin to a dot mage."

Henrietta sighed, massaging her brow. "Why?" she groaned, going to bite her nails before she caught herself. "Why can't something ever go right?" And then her mind began to whir. "Hmm. On the other hand, she's always had problems with magic. And she was acting normally when I talked to her, and I did specifically check that she recalled certain events." Tapping her index finger against her teeth, she paused. "Hmm. Mmm." Then she nodded. "I think I can trust her."

Agnes' eyes narrowed. "My princess," she said, carefully, "you are aware that I said that I do not know what she is, and that I have never met something like her before?"

"Yes." Henrietta's eyes narrowed. "However, I know _her_, and trust her enough to entrust this mission to her." She sighed. "She's the most reliable person I know, who I have apart from you, and she can keep secrets. And... Agnes, I would send you, but..."

"Viscount Wardes is officially loyal to the Crown, and you are not yet crowned, my princess. I am officially under your command, loyal only to you. Should the worst come to the worst, he is merely a Tristainian soldier snooping around in a civil war; I am a sign of your personal intervention. She is your best option."

"I know," Henrietta said, slumping back down into the soft leather seats. "I just wish she wasn't. As a friend."

The carriage continued on in silence. Then;

"Agnes? How much are you familiar with the tales of void mages?"

The older woman's hand went up to one of the many scars which criss-crossed her face. "Only a little," she said, cautiously. "I can't remember much. They're as rare as hen's teeth."

Henrietta let out a small smile. "Considerably rarer, actually; chickens are occasionally born with freakish teeth in their jaws. I've seen one, in a curiosity jar. But..." the princess made a curious noise, "everyone agrees that they are powerful, that their spells can destroy cities, that they can bind and break and mend all sorts of things, that they have strange familiars and are powerful and holy." She let out a small chuckle. "Which is to say, we know almost nothing. But from the tales, they could do things that even the entire royal family of Old Tristain, working together, couldn't."

Agnes stared at her, her oddly-shaped eyes narrow. "Is there a point to this, or are you just thinking out loud again?" she asked bluntly. "Do you want me to respond or not, my princess?"

"Hah." Henrietta nodded. "Thinking aloud. But Louise Françoise and I once spent almost a summer, when I was seven, trying to get her magic to work. Well... I say a summer; after she'd blown all those craters in the lawn, I filled them in with water and then we moved pond weed and frogs into them, and we were both rather scolded for that." She flapped a hand. "I digress. But... the way you said it. Looking at the tales, the things that void mages could do were so unlike normal mages that I wonder if they would read as mages, too."

The response was flat, efficient. "You think your friend is a void mage. Do you want her killed?"

"No! Why would you even..."

"A void mage is a saint in the making. A saint, or a martyr. That is how the Church will see it, and that is how the Germanians will see it. You have no proof but idle speculation, and so, my princess, do not speculate where unfriendly ears may be listening. And she is a threat to you. Do you really want such a religious figure? Interfering with your secular authority?"

Henrietta screwed her eyes shut. "... no. And she wouldn't do..."

"It is a pretty little theory," Agnes said, keeping her eyes on her superior. "But you have no evidence that anyone will find acceptable. I will have the musketeers sent with her keep an eye on her, though. And if their evidence suggests that she is a threat to you... that is when you will have to make a hard decision." The horribly scarred woman's sea-green eyes were intense, as she stared at Henrietta. "I couldn't care less for the Church, my princess," she said. "I am loyal to _you_ and, through you, the Tristainain crown, and I _will not _let you be hurt. But as it stands, it is merely your pet theory, and so you do not need to act."

The younger woman leant against carriage glass again. "Yes. It's for the best," she said, softly, before yawning.

Agnes leant forwards, gently placing her hand against Henrietta's brow. "You are tired," the scarred woman said, her voice soft. "I will wake you when you get back to Bruxelles. Cardinal Marazin will wish to see you, as will your mother, and you do not wish to fall asleep on your feet when dealing with either of them." She picked up a cushion, fluffing it up, and passed it to Henrietta, to place against the glass. "Rest."

"Mmm," Henrietta said, shifting about a bit. "Marazin is a bore, isn't he? He means well, but his voice makes me drowsy when he drones on and on. He's usually right. But his voice is boring."

The carriage continued on through the night, heading back to the capital and the Palace.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Father!" Jessica called, poking her head into the sideroom in the Charming Fairies Inn. "Father, father, where are you!"

"Oooh," smirked a man lounging in a chair, his doublet wrinkled and creased, "this is a prett' one indeed." He leered, dislodging the topless redhead who was the cause of the wrinkles and creases, who leant closer, tracing her finger along his jaw. "I think I want her too."

"My good friend, dear Baron, it is entirely up to my daughter whether she chooses you to bestow her favours upon," the proprietor of this establishment, Scarron said jovially, propping his chin on his hand.

"Prett' bountiful favours," the man slurred, staring at her chest. "Ver' pretty."

"Ah, _mia figlia_, why are you here," Scarron asked, straightening up slightly, his eyes becoming slightly sharper, as he glanced back at his daughter.

"I just got sent by the backroom staff to say that the last delivery of the new wine you ordered from Tarbes has been moved from to the basement, father. It's been checked, and it's all in good condition. Elloise says it's all a proper vintage."

"A new deliver' of wine from Tarbes?" The noble squinted down, at his now empty goblet. "That'd be just the thing, actuall'. I think I drank it all already." He reached for one of the three goblets in front of him, and chose one of the ones which didn't actually exist, slumping onto the table. "Maybe I can have some more, ol' boy?"

Scarron beamed. "_Mia figlia_, that is wonderful news indeed," he exclaimed. "Would you say that it's ready? And, Emma, give the Baron more wine!" he instructed the redhead. "As he is my good friend, he deserves only the best!"

"Yea', I do," the nobleman slurred "You're... you're so good t' me, Scarron. Not... not like m' wife."

Jessica, keeping a smile on her face, leant forwards slightly. "Yes, it's all ready," she said. "The vinyard say that they want this wine to sell well."

"Wonderful!" Scarron exclaimed. "Then we just need to..."

"_Mi mademoiselle_," the redhead reported, turning to face Scarron, "the Baron appears to have fall... I mean, be worse for wear." Idly, she tucked her breasts back into her loose dress, doing the buttons up with one hand as she waited for further instructions.

"Ah, such a shame." The man clasped his hands to his chest. "Such a shame indeed. Well, well. Emma, get one of the lads to carry him up to one of the rooms, to help him sleep it off, and make sure he is suitably _debonair _by the morning. You are his sweetheart, beloved of him; make him happy!"

Jessica stared flatly at her father, sweeping over to take the cups to be washed. "He fell worse-for-wear a little faster than usual," she remarked, raising an eyebrow as she sniffed the sweet-smelling wine.

Scarron gave a one-shouldered shrug. "The Baron, he is not a nice man," he said. "But he is rich, and the Baroness, she is charming. And clever. She prefers him out of her hair. So maybe I sweeten the tap a little, to spare Emma having to handle him."

"And I'm happy about that," the redhead added, as she levered the unconscious man to his feet. "Can I get some help here?" she called out. "He's got a gut and an 'alf."

The man shook his head, as a man in the dress of a valet stepped in, to help with the unconscious baron. "So sad. But," and he perked up a bit, "Jessica, you will have to look after the place for the next few days, yes? I will be selling our new wine, and we will be away. With luck, it'll only be one day, but otherwise you will need to manage the bookings on airsday and that means..."

"I already know, father," the girl said. Her hands balled into fists, but she relaxed, placing one hand on his brow. "And you'll be careful? I don't want to have to run this place by myself, and I saw what the... she could do."

Scarron puffed his chest up. "Don't you trust me, _mia figlia?_When I was a younger man, I fought in Romalia! I am a glorious champion of war! Bravest of men! I can deliver wine!"

"I _know _father," Jessica said, wearily, "but... still, take care."

* * *

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	10. 9: Flying High at World's Zenith

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 9: Flying High at World's Zenith**

* * *

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* * *

The air was crisp and sharp in the morning light. It may have lost the sharp edge that it had earlier in the year, but it was still months from summer, and a hint of late frost could still be seen on the rosebushes entwining around the lattice over the doorway where Louise de La Vallière waited. One tan-gloved hand smoothed down her bronze-coloured stomacher, before she gathered her mantle back tighter around her new dark-green long-sleeved bodice. The other gloved hand cradled the Staff of Destruction, once again in its wraps, against her shoulder as she paced up and down, her riding boots clicking against the stone floor.

"_It is far, far too early in the morning to be this early in the morning,_" Marisalon yawned. "_Fairest lady, I must wonder why the sun in your world insists in maintaining its cycles? Everything is so much neater and better organised when it is always directly overhead._"

Louise ignored the neomah, and turned again, her skirt, reaching below the knee but slit to mid-thigh for ease of riding, swishing. "They're late," she muttered to herself, with a hint of nerves. "Shouldn't they be here by now? Or am I early? And I'm missing school for... oh, but the Princess asked." Fretting, she continued to pace. The light shifted, pulsing, becoming warmer and hotter like the height of summer, before it returned to normal. Louise's hand went to her head, at the sudden wave of dizziness that hit her. These moments of oddness were getting more frequent, but Marisalon didn't seem to be bothered, or, indeed, notice them.

"_My lady, you are nervous, and exhausting yourself with unneeded worry. Instead of continuing this most futile repetition of steps, might it not be wiser to sit down while you wait? Ah_," the neomah interrupted herself, "_but it is also unpleasantly chilly. Choices, choices. Of course, things would have been better had you not, in a well-considered move, decided to skip dinner last night so that you could punish me – and, of course, it was richly deserved, but such righteousness does not solve the fact that we are hungry now._"

That was true, Louise had to admit. She might have ducked into the kitchen to grab some food as the commoners in there prepared breakfast, but that wasn't a substitute for a proper meal, and she was, in fact, feeling in the mood for spiced porridge and quails eggs. But no. She had given her word to the Princess, and she would not break it, come thunder, lightning or... she squeaked, at the feeling of the hand on her shoulder.

"_We need to work on your peripheral awareness_," Marisalon commented.

"V-viscount!" she managed, turning her head to stare into the blue-grey eyes of her fiancé.

Jean-Jacques Francis de Wardes, Viscount of Vajours, smiled back from beneath his broad-brimmed hat. A thin, aquiline nose rose above an immaculately trimmed beard and moustache, and the blues and greys of his military-cut clothing perfectly coordinated. Despite that apparent vanity, a closer look revealed that the garments were not made of the almost-gauzy cloth and expensive silks of the court, but instead were hard-wearing and warm, proof against the weather. And a second, more detailed examination revealed the symbols embroidered into the weave, anchoring spells within his clothing. "My little Louise," he said, genially, "I hope you have not been waiting here too long for me. We were delayed out of Bruxelles by trouble at one of the gates."

Emotions flickered across the girl's face, before she settled in a slightly blushing smile. "H-hardly any time at all," she replied. "In fact, I only just got here. You're not late or anything!" Inwardly, her emotions were a mess. This was the first time she had seen him in years, although their marriage had been arranged for ten years now. And... and when it had been set up, she had been the possibly-_inexprime _youngest daughter, rather than... what she was now...

"_Oh, my. My, my. He is attractive. Very attractive. My fairest lady, you have done exquisitely in your choice of fiancé! Such style! Such grace! Such a large... sword._"

... was it acceptable for your perverted head-familiar to be perverted over your fiancé? Louise wasn't sure about that. It wasn't in any of the etiquette books, because that was not a problem for most noble maidens. With other people, she could have taken that comment about 'swords' at face value, because Wardes did, in fact, have a sword slung over his back. Not with Marisalon. Louise had gotten to know the neomah well enough to know what she meant by that, even if she wished that she didn't have to.

Although, she was sixteen now, and so her marriage was getting closer, so maybe she needed to...

"_Heh_."

Louise coughed in an embarrassed manner, and refocused away from the _annoyance _of her head-familiar, back up at the Viscount, who offered her his hand. "My Louise, it has been some time, and..." he smiled, "I did not expect for us to be meeting like this, on a mission set for me by Her Highness."

The girl's lips twitched, as she took the hand. "Me neither," she said, trying to sound cool and elegant, like how her mother did when greeting other nobles. "H... Princess Henrietta asked it as a personal favour of me, as both... um... both a subject and a friend, and I could not in good face refuse." She blinked. "In good faith," she corrected herself. Had that sounded all right? She thought so, but that slip was embarrassing.

Wardes' chuckle, a pleasant, deep laugh put her at ease. "And I am sure that your mother would be proud of you doing that," he said. "Come with me, then, and I will introduce you to my brave knights, and the women that Her Highness has sent to chaperone and protect you. You took only what you needed?" Louise nodded, patting the small bag she had with her. "Good. The musketeers say they have everything that their commander told them to bring for you. Now," and he guided Louise toward the gate, their boots crunching gravel, "my dear, I heard that you were there, and helped in the victory over that disgusting criminal, Fouquet. That is very impressive indeed."

Louise looked down, humbly, glancing up at him under her eyelids. Her eyes glinted green momentarily, and she felt the storm-wreathed, crackling hurricane within the man next to her, smiling faintly. So strong, and yet he praised her. "Yes," she said, "... although I'm a bit surprised you knew. The Academy said that they were going to keep it hushed up."

Another chuckle, and the crunch of footsteps became the click of boots, as they moved onto the paving. "My little Louise, we of the Griffin Knights have ways of knowing things. Let the masses, and even the lesser nobility remain ignorant; we are the first and greatest of the orders of mage-knights. It is our duty to know of things that threaten our great nation, and as the Captain of the order, I must know most of all." Pausing, he turned back slightly, to look her in the eye. "I always believed that you had such power within you, even when others were less sure," he said. "You are a Vallière, and your mother is a great woman. For her to spawn some _inexprimé _weakling is slander worthy of calling such a person out." One pale eyebrow raised. "Of course," he said, continuing along the way, "I heard that you have already been experimenting with duelling."

Louise blushed as pink as her hair. "It was a misunderstanding," she mumbled, as they passed the guards, on their way out of the Academy.

"_Do you think they will have grapes on this mission?_" Marisalon asked hopefully, and was ignored.

And a blue-haired, blue-eyed girl watched them go, with no expression at all on her pale face.

* * *

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* * *

The sound of the knives against the chopping boards was a constant background in the hot, humid kitchens. The work to start preparing lunch had already started, even as, in a back room which leaked steam, the work of cleaning up after breakfast was well underway. And then there were the meals for the servants and the other commoners who were not permitted to eat with the nobles, which had to work their way in and around the feasts for the upper classes. Even that failed to take into account the way that some of the mages on the grounds tended to appear in order to graze in between mealtimes.

Therefore, even though the appearance of several men in armour as the guard shift ended was expected, it was not appreciated, because the culinary staff were rather busy, and the cavernous kitchen was nonetheless rather packed.

To deal with such matters efficiently, one of the senior maids was deployed. Old Eliza, known as 'that hag' to her inferiors when they were out of her hearing, was a brute of a woman; thinning hair streaked with bleached blonde via alchemical products, her hands raw and pink from a lifetime of service, with the muscles and shoulders of a person who spent all her time carrying heavy things around. It was widely agreed that she could beat any of the Academy's guards unarmed, and that if your sword dripped any of her blood onto a clean floor, even her death wouldn't save you.

"Well," she demanded, hands on hips, "what are you clanking ironmongers doin' here?"

"Well, we just got off shift, and we was wonderin'... you bein' a handsome lady an' all," the first of the guards began, ladling the compliments on like treacle, "if we might be excused a small snack, if you will."

The woman sighed, nevertheless fluttering her eyelids at him slightly, because one could but hope that such sentiments were genuine. "Jacques, you will be the death of me," she declared. "You, tryin' to take advantage of a poor ol' widow."

"And that no man'll take you again is a crime against God," the guard answered, extravagantly. "The column of young, handsome Griffin Knights who came by this morning must have not seen you, for how else would you still be here, rather than swept off your feet to be courted by them. Um..." He nudged his companion in the ribs.

"Erm... yes!" the other man declared. "Who would want some pink-haired brat, when someone of your... splendidness-osity and... oh yes, generosity is taken into account? Why, if they'd seen you, I've no doubt that you'd be a Duchess by tomorrow morning!"

The woman smiled. "Well... if I must," she said, slowly, before her head darted around. "You! Siesta!" she said, picking one of the younger maids, who was trying to look busy and not at all like she was listening in. "Go bring these _fine gentlemen _some bread. An'... yes, because they was so respectful, maybe some ham too. If there's any offcuts left."

"Right away!" Siesta blurted out, trying to conceal her sudden paleness, as she fetched two prepared plates of bread, adding cold meat from breakfast on top. "Excuse me?" she asked, carefully, as she handed it over. "What was that about a column of griffins?"

One guard nudged the other. "Griffin's don't half crap all over the road," he said, jovially. "It's like the worst parts of bird and dog shit. An'..." he added, with a wink, "I saw one of the knights step in one."

There was general hilarity in the kitchens at that, as the Third Estate took amusement from the suffering of the First.

Other guard grinned broadly. "It was wonderful," he said. "You know, I always wanted to be a Griffin Knight when I was a kid. Just the idea of gettin' to wear that mantle, and having this giant murderous beast you could ride..."

"You got married, dint'cha?" his compatriot interjected, to predictable hilarity.

"Siesta, fetch them some carrots or something," Old Eliza ordered. "Be more generous, girl!"

"... and galavantin' around, bein' the hero and rescuing the princesses from the terrible fate that they're caught up in." The man's eyebrows raised in a manner which was probably some form of sexual harassment. "'Course, they'd already collected quite a few pretty girls, along with them... missin' your beauty, Eliza," he added hastily. "Like one of the pink-haired brats from here. The one with the giant pigsticker."

Siesta's eyes narrowed, and she reflexively sucked in a gasp, before slowly exhaling. Her false smile was broad, as she trotted over to fetch some more vegetables. "Griffins are magnificent," she gushed, passing them to the soldiers. "Here you go!"

"Much obliged, lass. Now, as I was sayin'..."

With a click of her clogs against the stone floor, the maid stepped into one of the pantries, and began to hyperventilate, the breaths coming fast and shallow. This wasn't meant to happen. This wasn't meant to happen at all! Biting down on her knuckle, she tried to force herself to calm down, without much luck.

Okay, okay, okay. It was _possible_ that the anathema had escaped. Which meant it was probable. She wasn't like Jessica, she wasn't from a favoured branch of the family, things never went right for her and so unless she could work out what was happening and followed all the correct protocols _right now _they might think it was her fault.

Her hand went to the precious, breakable amulet which she had been entrusted with last time she went to the capital. This was exactly what it was meant for.

She'd only get one shot at this.

* * *

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* * *

The hooves of five horses, and the near-silent padding of a column of griffins, sounded against the stone roads of the Tristainain countryside, which rose above the surrounding fields and hedgerows. The Adélaidan road network, though almost a hundred and fifty years old, was still kept in good condition, for the grand project of that visionary queen was still the backbone of the nation's trade network. Unlike the neighbouring nation of Gallia, where the roads were maintained, poorly, by the local lords, in Tristain the highways were property of the crown. And the investment, which had stretched to active reinforcement and elevation of the stone and the setting up of proper drainage channels by earth mages, had more than paid off. Because of them, windships were only needed for longer distance transport and so goods were cheaper, and the larger cities, such as Bruxelles, could take in the produce of a larger area, lowering the incidences of riots when food supplies were delayed. Some noble families still held it was an intrusion of the crown upon the rights of the nobility, not least because it was used as an additional levy upon landowners based on the total length of roads which ran through their lands, but there was no way now, what with the influence of the _inexprimé _trading houses who benefitted greatly from them, that the situation would easily change.

Louise was quite aware of this. She was, after all, the third daughter of one of the largest landowning families in the country. She was expected to know this sort of thing, because the fortunes of the highest of the nobility were built, fundamentally, upon land. But even if she hadn't know this, she would have learned it all again, because the young woman on the horse beside her just _wouldn't shut up_ about it. The musketeer, dressed unlike her fellows – who trailed behind the two of them in the garb of personal servants – in the fashion of a moderately wealthy _inexprimé _house, seemed like an endless fountain of knowledge about such things. Rudimentary, already-known, not-taking-a-hint-when-you-try-to-change-the-topic knowledge.

And the worst thing was, Marisalon was alternating between listening intently, and making comments about the attractiveness of the other pink-blonde girl. It wasn't like she was actually that pretty. And this was like the worst... well, second... third... maybe fifth-worst part of Eleanoré's occasional show-off-how-clever-I-am talks back home, only moderated by the fact that Louise actually knew what she was talking about.

Louise preferred, instead, to take the chance to watch Viscount Wardes from behind. He was a considerably more interesting spectacle, and the way that his lower back moved with the sway of his griffin was _fascinating_. Of course, she had to quickly look back at the musketeer, whose name was Anne-Sophie, and pretend to be interested whenever it looked like Wardes was about to turn around, because it wouldn't be proper to be staring at him like that, even if he was her fiancé, but still, it proved a rather pleasant distraction.

The neomah approved of this. That approval filled Louise with shame. Not enough for her to stop watching him, of course, but it was certainly there. Already, the girl suspected that her moral compass was starting to acquire an opposite-of-Marisalon direction.

One of the other griffins in the group let out a keening mew, and the pink-haired girl's attention shifted. There were ten other Griffin Knights here, beyond the Viscount, which meant that she was surrounded by one of the most magically dangerous small groups in Halkeginia, save maybe the Church Knights. Every one of these riders was at least Line level; most were Triangle, and Jean-Jacques Francis de Wardes, of course, was the pinnacle of magical ability. And together, aesthetically they were _magnificent_, shining breastplates tucked under the mantles of the mage-knights, wands and blades readied. Wardes had a long sword sheathed over one shoulder, others carried lance-like staffs or the short blade-wands popular among combat-trained mages. In their blue and grey, on their chimerical eagle-lion beasts, they were figures of awe.

Louise felt a wave of the old nagging inferiority wash against her, and she really wished that she'd summoned something proud and majestic like these griffins, or Mother's manticore. Not a useless... well, not useless, but the neomah wasn't exactly something that she could show off, and she still didn't have a proper familiar. Stupid perverted head-familar.

There was a pause.

'What, no witty remark?' she thought.

"_Shush-shush, not right now,_" Marisalon replied. "_I'm listening to this fascinating and attractive girl, and her most wonderful lecture on the various infrastructural improvements that your mages have implemented. My fairest lady, even if you will not take her into the harem that you clearly should get, I would implore you to consider her many and wonderful virtues as a chatelaine, yes? Clearly, someone this interested in infrastructure is wasted as a musketeer._" The neomah sniffed, despite lacking a nose as part of its lack of a body. "_Some of us are thinking about your task to establish an independent power base in this land, you know_."

"Excuse me," Louise said out loud, raising one hand, before continuing with all her trained nobility, "but although this is fascinating, I must talk with Viscount Wardes." She nudged her horse forwards, into a slightly faster trot, so she could draw level with the man. She kept a firm hand on the reins as she did so, because horses became skittish around creatures such as griffins which were, in fairness, quite willing to attack and devour herbivores of about their size, given half a chance.

The man smiled down at her. "Come to talk to me, my little Louise?" he asked, good humour in his voice. "And I thought you were enjoying the company of your own fairer sex," he added, dropping his voice a fraction.

Louise's expression turned into a sort of wincing smile with a hint of blush, before it straightened out properly again. "Ah," she began, "no, I just felt that I should talk with you." A nervous smile flickered across her face. "Just for a bit."

Wardes smiled in return, sitting back slightly on his griffin. "Ah. And what would you have me talk about, my betrothed?"

Louise froze. What was there to talk about? He was her fiancé, a marriage arranged ten years ago, and she had not seen him in almost that long. "Um," she began. And then stopped. Panicking, a sound like a finger on a wine-glass started up in her head, as she felt her newfound sense of truth and lies kick in, for lack of anything else to say or do.

He was still smiling, in that way which made her feel more uncertain about herself. "Even if you've grown up – and I can see more and more of your mother in you – you're still the small and dainty little girl who dried her eyes on my doublet. Still shy and stammering."

"I'm not stammering!" Louise blurted back.

"No, of course you aren't," Wardes replied. "And you're still young. A little bit of nervousness is fine." He reached out to brush her cheek; she flinched away, instinctively, from that white-gloved hand, but forced herself to lean back forwards, the cloth soft against her cheek. "I never forgot about that sweet little girl, you know," he said, gently.

"Which... oh. Me, yes," Louise said, hating herself for letting her mouth run away with her.

He chuckled. "Yes, you. Do you still remember? Well, after my father met an... ill-advised death in that petty border skirmish against Germania, I inherited my title. I was the viscount of a fairly small north-eastern title, with a few barons pledged to me, and a reliable stream of income... Vajours is beautiful, for all that it gets cold in the winters, Louise. You will get to see much of it. Ah, but..." and he sighed, "I am not a man born to manage land. Wardes' have served the Crown since the Glorious Century; it was a Wardes who led the foot infantry of Louis de la Vallière against Tristain. So I left my land in the hands of Galgann – who had looked after it while my father was on campaign, anyway – and went off to the Academy Militant."

"Urgh," Louise muttered.

"Yes, yes, I am quite aware that they are the Academy of Magic's old rivals," he said, with a sparkling smile. "Well, I excelled there, and I caught the eye of the Prince-Consort, who had known my father. He recommended me for the Griffin Knights, and, though the training was tough, I rose through the ranks faster than any man has before. I am Knight-Captain of the Griffins, now, at age 26, and I am a Square-class mage. In the last century, only one Tristainian mage has reached Square younger than me, and that was your mother." He paused, and removed his hat, holding it to his chest as he faced Louise. "I believe I may now be worthy of your hand."

"M-me?" Louise stuttered, the blush returning anew. She knew that he was telling the truth, from the cold, crystalline note in her head. All that for her? All _that?_" V-viscount, I d-don't know what to say."

With a flick of his head, which had his grey hair cascading around him, Wardes put his broad-brimmed hat back on. "Say nothing, my sweet Louise. Now, if you excuse me, I must handle some military affairs. Please, you can return to your," he winked, "fascinating conversation with that _inexprimé _musketeer. But I look forwards to renewing our acquaintance further on this trip." And without even spurring his griffin on, it increased its pace, leaving Louise behind, mouth half-open.

* * *

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* * *

Headmaster Osmond scanned his eyes down the contents of the letter. "Mmm... yes... aha," he muttered to himself, before folding the paper back up with a rustle, and peering down at the blue-haired girl in the seat before him. "It all appears to be correct," he said to himself.

The girl waited.

"Miss Loungeville," the white-haired man called out, and there was a proper pause before the secretary opened the door. "Can you prepare a slip for this girl? Mother ill, emergency letter from home, permission to leave school, for..." he raised his eyebrows at Tabitha.

"Two weeks," the girl said, sitting bolt-upright in her chair, a subtle tightening of her jaw muscles instantly suppressed.

"... two weeks... ah, yes. Add that to the records," he told the woman. "Chop chop."

The green-haired woman smiled acidly, but nodded. "Certainly, sir. I will do that, just as soon as you yourself give me the book which is kept in your desk where those records are kept."

"Oh." Osmond sucked on his pipe, as he reached down to pass it over. "Oh yes. Here it is. Silly old me. Why, I'd forget my head if it wasn't held on by bone and sinew and the like." He flapped a hand at the two females in the room. "Now, you two, go. I must... contemplate the uttermost mysteries of the universe even unto the darkest reaches of time and space, to search the inner darkness of the wonders of the soul, such that..." he exhaled a smoke ring, "... all falls beneath my intellect."

As the door closed behind her, Miss Loungeville let out an exasperated sigh, glancing down at the blue-haired girl beside her. "By which he really means, he wants to spy on the third year girls who have riding lessons scheduled, and," she pulled out a gold-rimmed crystal from her front pocket, and checked it, "... yes, they should be changing about now."

Tabitha blinked. "Ah," she said.

Back in the room, Osmond lent back, letting his familiar crawl from the table onto his sleeve. "What's that, Mótsognir?" he asked the mouse, tilting his head. "You say that that sweet, innocent girl smelt of hate and fear and secrets? Whatever could you mean by that?"

With a sigh, he opened the box before him, and, using the spoon within scooped out a mound of poppy seeds, placing it on some parchment, and his familiar beside it. The mouse promptly began to gorge itself.

"Oh, Mótsognir," he remarked, blowing another smoke ring. "Something is rotten in the state of Gallia, do you not think so?"

The mouse squeaked.

"Well, of course you don't! You thought that the Germanians would never take Bécs. But the capital of another Otmani state has been given to Matthias I, and all that wealth has gone to his coffers. The Iron Dragon eats another state, and those fools won't unify to stop him. I should have never listened to you about that! You're atrocious at the great game of politics!"

* * *

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* * *

The column of griffins was making good time, the chimeric beasts eating up the kilometres with their unceasing movement. Louise, who was a fair horsewoman herself, mentally noted that they _sounded _rather different from normal riding, for they were unshod, and so the normal stattaco beat of hooves was absent. Viscount Wardes was careful to keep them to a pattern of walking and trots, to avoid exhausting the beasts, and stops at waystations were enough to keep them watered.

In the early afternoon, though, as they approached the next waystation, thick dark smoke could be seen rising from the shallow valley. The viscount raised one hand, and gestured to one of his knights, who spurred his griffin up into the air, the eagle-like wings kicking up dust from the road. It was only a short while before he returned.

"Town's been hit... sinkholes look like wyrmsign," the young man reported. "No signs of movement, the church tower has fallen, and the baronial estate is completely gone."

"I see," the captain said, blue-grey eyes narrowing. "Louise," he said, turning to her, "you had best steel yourself. There will likely be distressing scenes ahead. Just remember, I am here to protect you. Do not let fear conquer you; I believe you are strong enough to stay brave."

Louise swallowed. "I understand," she said. She did not mention that she had caused her own distressing scenes yesterday, for she was still not quite used to herself, as someone who could do all of that. Someone who could break those bones, who could flay people with silver sand and burn them with green-burning glass. If it came down to it, she could protect herself.

Moving again, the column crossed the ridge, and saw the full extent of the damage. "Hold!" Wardes commanded, raising one hand, the Griffon Knights falling in smoothly. His eyes swept the shallow valley, taking in the upturned earth, the sinkholes, and the collapsed tower of the local church, the remnants leaning precipitously. "De Rouvroy," he said, turning his head to his second-in-command, "had you heard word that Puy-de-Lac had a problem with Earth Dragons?"

The dark-haired man shook his head. "No word, Knight-Captain," he replied, shaking his head. "They should know better than to be caught so-unawares. Those Void-damned wyrms are a problem here, and the Royal Geologists should have surveyors..." he paused, checking a map, "indeed, they have a station an hour's ride away from here." He frowned. "Completely out of our way, though."

Leaning forwards so the brim of his hat kept the sun out of his eyes, Wardes nodded. "It's always the way," he remarked laconically. "We need to pass through, anyway. We have some margin of time, so we had best see what the locals say happened. At least we can pass it over to someone else, to take to the geologists." His gaze flickered over the fallen buildings, the ruined church. "Earth Dragons. Such an annoyance. De Sirleaf, Montesainte," he ordered, naming the two Triangle-class Earth mages present, "begin mapping the area. I want to know if that wyrm has moved on. Otherwise... forwards!"

* * *

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* * *

The scent of smoke was thick and pungent, down in what remained of the village and the waystation. The road had completely collapsed in one section, a sudden precipitous drop scarred across the landscape and drawing a line through the partially-fallen church. The buildings which were still standing were tilting and sunken, for the entire settlement had been undermined.

"Why is it on fire?" Louise asked, softly.

Viscount Wardes glanced down at her. "Think about it, my little Louise," he said. "Earth Dragons live beneath the ground, yes? And when they undermine a place, the ground collapses. But that doesn't make fireplaces and the like go away. So when the tunnel behind one collapses, roofs fall in. Thatch and wood burns." He glanced around. "By my guess, this happened in the early morning, when everyone was still asleep. The peasants and their fires... I doubt any of them cleaned out the fireplace properly. Thatch..." he interlocked his fingers, mimicking a building collapsing, "... and it burns."

"Oh." Louise wetted her lips, looking around. "So people would have... have just burned to death?"

"Or been crushed by the rubble," one of the other knights interjected. He spat onto the ground, earning a glare from his captain. "Wyrms. I hate them. They're not even useful, compared to other species of dragons."

"Shouldn't their wards have warned them?" Anne-Sophie asked, from her position on the back of another griffin. A pistol and a smallsword had somehow appeared from the voluminous skirts the musketeer was wearing. Her thumb nervously played with the safety restraining the magelock.

"They're not perfect," Wardes said, dismissively. "But... look. One big trail, and some smaller ones. Montesainte, what do you think? The same one coming back and around, deeper, or a swarm?"

The earth mage frowned, glancing up at the Viscount from his dismounted position. "If it's a single one, it's a very large one. Bigger than anyone I've seen. And they never come back and around; they always just sweep through, unless they're making a new nest. But... the tunnels are the same width. So... maybe it's just one."

"Then we'll hold for now," his commander ordered. "If there's an Earth Dragon this large, which can ignore wards... we need proof. We can spare time, for a closer look."

"The mission..." began the musketeers' hard-faced corporal from the rear of the column, her musket resting on her thighs.

"... has enough give in it that we can spare an hour or two to check this place," Wardes replied coldly. "If nothing else, we can give the griffins a rest, and see if we can salvage some feed." He turned to look back at the woman, dressed as a lady's maid. "You can do that, can't you?" he asked, mock sympathy in his voice. "Find some safe water and feed for them in the ruins of the waystation, while we look for survivors and see if this beast has stayed around."

The woman's lips curled in contempt, but she nodded. "Yes. _Viscount_," she responded. "We can keep Lady de la Vallière protected while you _heroic knights _engage in your little... quest."

Wardes' wand hand twitched, the point bouncing towards the woman in the servants uniform before dipping again. "Do you wish to challenge me?" he snapped, with sudden violence. "If you do not, I suggest you show some respect. _Musketeer._"

The two held gazes for a moment, before the woman's eyes dropped. "Yes, Lord Wardes," she said, clearly.

"Good." The man glanced momentarily at Louise, before drawing the blade slung across his back, raising it up high so its blade caught the light – which, quite unlike the shining steel of the others' weapons, looked like old, slightly pitted bronze, like a weapon which had been dug out of some ancient battlefield. "Men," he said, loudly and clearly, "prepare for the death of a dragon."

And the sword spoke back, saying "Dragons! Oooh! I haven't killed one of them in... well, years! Of course, spending years in a marsh does that sort of thing to you, but... I can't wait to do it again!"

Wardes' eyes narrowed slightly at that, and he slumped as the moment was ruined, but Louise was still staring wide-eyed at the sword.

"_Oooh. That is a rather nice daiklaive, by my reckoning,_" Marisalon remarked. "_Fairest lady, should your fiancé tragically and unfortunately fall in battle, no doubt against uncountable foes – for he is most powerful – I would recommend that you try your best to get your beauteous hands on it. I wonder why it looks corroded. Perhaps it is venomous!_"

'... what?' Louise thought, broken out of her amazement at the talking sword by the comments of the neomah. 'What are you talking about?'

"_My lady, such a weapon? It... ooh, ooh, maybe it is corrosive! Or possesses an edge which disintegrates within a foe, maiming them hideously! Princess of the Green Sun, we must watch your dashing and handsome fiancé smite mightily this foe, so that that you may seduce him by swooning over his bravery! And who knows? Maybe then you'll get to touch his..._"

"No!" the girl blurted out, blushing, to stares from the others.

"_... sword. Let's hope that he is not as undersized as his 'daiklaive', though, when you do get his trousers off. Because, fairest lady, that actual daiklaive is rather undersized by any reasonable standard._"

"My dear," Wardes said calmly to his red-faced fiancé, who appeared to be shaking with the abject terror that something might happen to him, "I am at no risk. And do not be afraid of the sword; it is merely an ancient and potent weapon." The fact that it sounded like he muttered "And annoying," afterwards was probably just the sound of some old timbers breaking. "So stay with the musketeers, and I will bring you its head. As your champion."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The girl's skull impacted against the wall, with a solid 'thunk' and the sound of breaking stone. Slightly dazed, the pink-haired girl staggered back, and slumped onto one of the ruined pews. "Shut up!" she hissed to herself, clutching her now aching forehead. "Shut up! How dare you! How _dare _you, you stupid, _insolent _neomah! I have tolerated... tolerated! I have tolerated your rude manners for far too long! I'll... I'll..." and that was where she trailed off. How exactly was she meant to punish something like this, when it was inside her head, and... well, she couldn't beat it or anything.

Her fingers twitched, as she imagined a riding crop in her hands, leaving red welts over the pink-purple feminine figure of Marisalon, until the neomah begged for mercy, and gave a sincere apology for all the... the _indignities _which it had forced her through. Yes! If only she could... work out a way to do that. One hand went to her forehead, only to come back sticky with blood, and she cursed under her breath, only to curse again as she scratched herself with her stupid brass fingernails.

Raising her head slightly, she noticed the wall, and the dent. She had, apparently, for all that her head was hurting like... hurting a lot, managed to dent solid stone with her skull. Just another reminder that... well, Louise wasn't quite sure what it was a reminder of. But it certainly reminded her of something.

The neomah was still silent. It was probably too much to hope that 'Go, and never come back' would actually work on it. Still, at least the perverted familiar knew enough to shut up when she was so righteously angry at it. If it had tried to answer back... well, she didn't know what she would have done. She felt so very angry, like her blood was boiling, and her heart was a burning ball of rage.

So she merely stayed in the ruined Church, where the musketeers had left her – after requesting that she not wander off – while they tried to move as much as they could from the ruins of the waystation. She could have volunteered to help them, but she was not about to. Not only was she too _furious_ to do that, but all four of the older woman were commoners. Moving heavy objects was what they were _for_.

Hands balled into fists, brazen nails digging into her palms, she merely waited, ragged breaths heavy, as she tried to calm down and restore her mask of proper noble behaviour.

* * *

{0}

* * *

A single orb of fire floated in the air, wrapped around a crystal, casting light on the stinking mess of the tunnel. The Griffon Knights had discarded their mantles and their broad-brimmed hats; now they were wearing thick, undyed sackcloth over the top of their clothes, and crystal-lensed leather hoods. Those head-coverings still didn't do much to help the smell, despite the scented herbs bound over the airways. In the light, the crumbling walls oozed dark fluid.

"It was coming this way," one of the knights told Wardes, gesturing along. "Look at the patterns. The claw-marks, the bites... it was heading straight for the town. Right through the wards, like they weren't there."

"This isn't right," the Viscount replied, concern in his voice. "Even the eldest ones should have shied away, if only a little." He took a deep breath in through his mouth, trying hard not to breathe with his nose. "The wards are still up, too."

"Think someone lowered them," Alan de Trebourne, the youngest son of the Count de Trebourne, and the Viscount's second-in-command stated laconically, raising his hand. The crystal moved onwards with his gesture.

Viscount Wardes looked around. He had his men with him; good solid men, personally loyal to him. "I think so," he agreed. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

"What are we waiting for, then!" exclaimed the sword in the knight-captain's hands. "Let's find this dragon! And stab it right in that bit where the ribcage meets the throat, so blood goes everywhere, but you've cut the spine so the hind-legs don't thrash and accidentally crush you! I like it when the blood goes everywhere! It's like flowers! Except flowers don't bleed when you stab them more! Well, most flowers don't. Some do. Like bloodflowers."

Wardes let out a long suffering sigh. "We will kill the dragon, if we can _find_the dragon, blade," he told the sword in his hand, to muted chuckles from his men.

"Partner, I spent nearly a hundred and fifty years in a swamp. You know how many things I got to kill then? Three! Do you know how long I had to rock to manage to fall off that rock and crush those water voles! Nearly three months! And that was more of a crushing thing, rather than the stabbing or slashing which is the best possible thing for a sword to be doing. And so I really, really, really, really, really want to kill a dragon! I haven't got to kill one in years!"

"You know, I bet this sword has a tale to tell," de Trebourne said, tilting his head slightly.

"Oh, it has a tale to tell, all right," Wardes said, drily. "There are only two problems. One, getting it to be quiet. And two, it has a bad memory."

"So which blade is it?" the other man asked. "The Almacia?"

There was something that sounded remarkably like an embarrassed cough from the sword. "Can't say I really remember," it admitted. "Something happened, and my mind seems like a... thing with holes in it... person who I've stabbed! That's a thing with holes in it! But I'm sure killing a dragon might help me remember!"

"I am fairly sure that you are the most annoying, mono-focussed magical construct ever to exist," Wardes muttered, as he ordered his men forwards with hand gestures. "And can you be _quiet _for longer?"

"I'm a sword, partner. I'm made for stabbing. And slicing. And occasionally people hit other people using the flat of my blade, or with my pommel, although, personally, I feel that's outside my jurisdiction."

"Yes, yes." The knight-captain flexed his hand, muttering words, and the blade began to glow, with a cold blue light. "... winds, come to me, search for me, bring forth your knowledge and..."

There was a rumble, and a sudden breeze from in front of them, along with the sound of disintegrating rocks and a vile stench; worse even than the rest of these tunnels.

Wardes blinked. "Alan?" he asked, quickly.

"Cave-in!" the mage, who had some affinity for earth, replied. "And that's from the area that de Mountefort and his men are in!"

"He's a Triangle Earth", one of the other knights added. "He shouldn't be caught unaware by a cave in. He'll be fine."

"Unless it's the wyrm," Wardes responded, breaking into a run.

* * *

{0}

* * *

One could only stay furious at something within your own head for so long – at least when it wasn't replying, and being an obnoxious head-familiar – and so Louise had managed to calm down to a sort of simmering sulk, which was at least easier on her skull than headbutting random things. With this relative calmness, came the knowledge that her forehead was rather bloodied –even though the cuts had closed up, there was still a mess – and that there would be questions if she came out looking like this.

With a glance around the room, Louise winced. The level of damage to the church hadn't quite sunk in when she had entered, because she had been rather more furious. But now she could see, this chapel, rather larger than normal for a village of this size due to the fact that there was a waystation here, was ruined. Almost an entire wall had crumbled into a sinkhole, and the broken roof timbers had crushed most of the pews. Only the front, where the altar was kept, was mostly intact. And the only water she could see around was in the font, which was used to represent the element of water in ceremonies. The altar had slid into it, as the floor subsided, but there was still water there, because the pool was large enough for a priest to immerse himself.

It wouldn't _really _matter if she used some of the water in the font to clean off the blood, would it? After all, the sacred fires were already out, and the glass sphere which they had been using to represent Wind was broken. It wasn't like she was some unholy abomination desecrating a holy place by using some water; she was just a girl, and a noble at that, too.

With a nod, it was settled, and she squatted by the pool, squinting at her broken reflection in the water. The cut had been shallow – almost a little too shallow, considering that she had managed to crack the wall with her head – but there was still matted blood in her hair, and that was disgusting. Right over where those... those crossed green-brass sword things showed up. Louise wasn't quite sure what they meant, and her stupid perverted head-familiar just claimed they were the mark of the Chosen of Malfeas...

... Louise paused, and tilted her head, as a sudden, strange thought struck her. Did that make her a _familiar_ of sorts? Because that was sort of how the familiar runes worked, complete with the way that they flared when they activated, but... no. She was a noble. Not some _animal_. With care, she wiped away at the blood with a handkerchief from her pocket, being slightly more vigorous as she tried to clean it out of her hair. They would certainly remark if there was a patch of darker colour at the front of her normal pink. She gazed at herself after letting the ripples disappear. Yes, that looked like it was all gone. Reflected in the holy font, she could admire her own appearance. Running her hand over a cheek, she could see the similarity to both Cattleya and her mother, the latter especially looking stronger than usual, with her hair somewhat windblown from the ride. And in this poor reflection, she could ignore that fact that her eyes were now slightly larger, slightly darker than they _should _be, that her lips had a curl to them that wasn't hers, that her fingernails were these sharp almost-claws of brass that... Louise muttered a curse to herself... she was still having problems cutting, so had grown enough that she had to take care not to scratch things. She broke those thoughts even as she broke the water's surface, rinsing her handkerchief in the pool, taking it over to dry on a patch of sunlight on some of the less-dusty flagstones.

Her back turned, she completely missed the wisps of steam that her blood produced in the sacred waters, which no longer looked quite so clear, no longer the sparkling representation sanctified to the holy faith. Now it was just water, pooled in a ruined building, light through the fallen roof settling on the broken font. And, though she may have missed the reaction of the waters to her blood, as she looked around the chapel, Louise could somehow feel it, the loss of something sacred in the broken stained glass on the floor, the reduction of the sacred to the secular in the fallen altar. It was a melancholy feeling, as she waited here alone.

Well. That wasn't right.

Quite deliberately, Louise stepped over to the fallen altar, protruding from the font, and pushed her weight against it. It slid slightly, just enough to convince her that it wasn't completely immobile. She might be able to get it out of the font. It would be... yes, her good deed for the day, as a faithful daughter of the Church, helping to restore it – and where were the local priests, or, indeed, the villagers? Shouldn't they be doing it, rather than leaving it up to passing nobles, Louise asked herself, before shaking her head. She'd need a lever, though...

The pink-haired girl's eyes fell slowly, inexorably onto the Staff of Destruction, propped against a wall where she had left it.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Up in the clouds above, Tabitha waited, her draconic familiar holding herself still within the clouds without even the beat of wings. Up here, wreathed in clouds, it was windy as well as damp; she could see neither the sky nor the ground. The girl had charmed the local breezes, which darted up and down to bring her snapshots of what was going on, but this was mostly cold, slow, boring tracking work. She couldn't get lower, especially with Jean-Jacques de Wardes present – and she had seen files on just what that man was capable of – but she could still see enough from here.

Tabitha shivered, and sniffed, leaning forwards to hug Sylphid's warm flank closer, feeling the pulse of the dragon's heartbeat against her cheek. It was too cold and damp up here to read. If she had more time, she would have been able to grab her waterproof-charmed books, but that had slipped her mind in the rush. And it would be a long while before she got the message back from Versailles, born on the winds.

Certainly, she had been right to follow. Some secret mission from the Tristainian Princess, ten of the Griffin Knights and their Captain, and four musketeers from the personal guard of Princess Henrietta? Along with Louise de la Vallière, who – after the Fouquet incident – Tabitha had already been keeping an eye on, as her magic was... strange.

This was suspicious in the extreme, she thought, in between sniffles.

One of the errant breezes darted up, bringing with her the smell of Earth Dragon and human blood and fear, the images flickering before her eyes. Beneath her, her own dragon made a questioning noise, the vibration passing through her bones, and dipped slightly.

"No," Tabitha said, after a moment's thought. She sneezed. "Wait."

The blue dragon made a somewhat disappointed whine, and returned to her circling.

* * *

{0}

* * *

After a moment's glance around the ruined chapel, Louise stripped off her outer travelling layers, depositing them on an area that looked clearer of stone dust. Rather than take off her riding skirt, though, she instead rolled it up and tucked the ends into the top of her underbreeches. It looked ridiculous, but it meant that she wouldn't have to undo the laces that hooked up to her bodice, and that was always a pain. It was almost enough to make one thankful for the uniform of the Academy, which may have had a rather-too-short skirt, imposed by the current headmaster, and which relied overmuch for the mantle for warmth, but at least it was easy to put on compared to the amount it was necessary to wear when travelling. She would have needed to take a maid from home for sure if they'd had some of the older uniforms seen in paintings in the school.

"_It's because your climate is somewhat like Cherak,_" Marisalon muttered in her head, voice insolent and sulky. "_It's cold and wet and doesn't have the least part of weather control. Like some place in the North-East of the Threshold._"

Louise ignored the neomah, and instead paced around the fallen altar, Staff of Destruction in hand. It had not been pushed by anything; the subsidence of parts of the chapel's foundations had cracked and broken the rock, leaving the decorated stone block to fall down the new incline under its own pass. That was in a way good news, because it meant that it could be slid, but considering how much larger it was than her, it did not exactly put her at ease. Still pacing, Louise wracked her brains for anything she could think of to help move it, even once she had lifted it out of the font. She glanced around the building, wondering again where the priests and laity had gotten to, before she shook her head, and forced herself to confront reality. The priests of this sacred place, sanctified to the Highest of Holies, were dead, along with the other forty-thousand souls who dwelt in this city. The sky above her was painted red with smoke and toxic plumes, and the charnel stench of meat was omnipresent. She had seen what the new essence weapons that Bright Shattered Ice was starting to experiment with was like. But as she looked around, one wall of this cathedral all that was standing – and only then because the altar, cast in orichalcum had shielded it – it was just another reminder for all that her old friend put her trust in craftsmanship, only the gifts of the Incarnae that dwelt within them could ever compare to the terrible might of those who crafted the world.

For Ramethus had attacked but once, and this place had died.

For a moment, she shivered, and thought of those terrible battles, now eleven centuries and more in the past. There were near-children with her, Chosen who had never seen what a titan such as this could do, who thought that it was _natural _that the defeated were sealed away and that Ramethus was an aberration, a freak of nature for being free and his souls being unbanishable.

She and the other veterans knew better. And this? The Terrestrial garrison of Kanaran dead, eliminated by, if her estimations were right, multiple third and second circle devas and a horde of Firsts, even as Ramethus itself went for the geomantic nexus here, flooding it with his essence to blight this land and ruin the South-Eastern Pentarchal Node as he corrupted the water-demenses that fed this dry land. That much was not unexpected. But then to withdraw? To seed the land with those terrible first devas that hid below the soil and struck from ambush, that would require years of work to remove – for they could not be banished? The spite, the ruthless efficiency, the way that hunter-deva had killed the local gods permanently and the air had been sealed such that no words could be carried out on the wind?

There was a certain amount of admiration there, she thought, running her hand along her golden armour, fingers against that melted section she had earned long ago. The kind of admiration that could only come from the words 'That's what I would have done'.

And that was scary, because such ruthless efficiency, such treachery, to strike to remove a goal and leave nothing to send word of your plans, then withdraw as soon as your goals were complete? This... this primordial was acting like a _soldier_.

Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière paused, and gasped in a deep breath, one hand going to her now-clean forehead, to cover the faint glitter of green and brass upon it. That! That was not one of her thoughts! That wasn't thinking things like she thought! Those weren't names she knew; that was not the world she saw now! She...

... and then she stared at the altar, back in place, and felt the strain and burn in her muscles make its way into her conscious mind. As if pulled by strings, her eyes followed the drag-marks on the solid stone, and then flicked down, as she realised that her lower half was drenched.

"M-m-m..." she stuttered. "Marisalon. What j-just happened?"

There was a yawn from within her own skull. "_Why, you just moved that altar back into place,_" the neomah said, without her usual flattery or overly flowery mode of conversation. "_But I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you that. Because, you know, that's what you just did._"

"Did I?" Louise asked softly.

There was a snort from the other being. "_Why, yes,_" the head-familiar responded. "_What else do you think happened?_"

Rather than answer, Louise looked up at the blue spring-sky, though the hole in the roof. She glanced down again, trembling, as shaking hands smoothing out her drenched underbreeches with reflexive motions. She didn't know what to do. What was she meant to do? What had just happened? She shivered uncontrollably, terror flooding her veins, before she took refuge in the place where she had always found it; faith. Licking her lips, she knelt before the restored altar, head bowed, her hands resting on her lap. "Our Lord," she began, lips moving in long-memorised rote, "who art all things, who is here wi-with us in the strength of the earth, the w-warmth of the fire, the sanctity of the waters and the breath of the air, and in the heavens above, the Founder, who filled the earth and skies with life, in the name of Brimir, S-Saint and Prophet and Martyr who s-saved us from all evils, I-I-I beseech you, hear this pr-prayer of this faithful daughter of the Church."

"_Something really is the matter,_" Marisalon said, voice suddenly much more serious. "_My lady? Why are you distressed?_"

Louise ignored the neomah. "I..." she swallowed, hands on her knees, as water pooled around her. Eyes wide, she suddenly leapt to her feet, and her hands went to a pocket in her bodice, to pull the still-hateful flint and tinder that she had to carry around for lighting fires. For some reason, the green fire didn't work for normal burning, only utter destruction, which was not what she needed. Hyperventilating, she struck at it, until she managed to get a small fire started on the brazier which bore the fire, and she paused a moment, to get her breath under control, before she started to blow gently on the small fire, feeding it tidbits. It would only last for a few minutes before it exhausted what she could give it, but that should be enough, right? And... well the roof was collapsed, and it was drafty, and that should be enough to count for Wind. And there was certainly Earth around; maybe too much. But she wasn't a member of the clergy, and she couldn't get things in the proper way. She could only hope that God would listen to her. He had never answered her before, even through the long nights when she prayed for magic, prayed for Cattleya to get better, prayed for... for anything, but that was just natural, and she had always felt he was listening in some way. But... was it too much to ask for an answer right now, when she was feeling this disturbed?

The girl swallowed hard, and knelt again. "Hear this prayer," she began, again, voice slightly more confident as she seemed to take strength from the flickering of her small fire. "Please, Founder... what's happening? Am... am I crazy? I just wanted to be a normal mage, and..." she paused for breath. "Lord and Founder, I ask... please? What's going on? Why am I remembering things that I never did? Why... why is everything so odd? Help me. Please?"

Before her eyes, the tiny pile of kindling burned green for a second, leaving only white ash in its place, and Louise slumped down, shouldered hunched together. "And help my sister Cattleya overcome the sickness that she fights against," the pink-haired girl said, her voice hollow, working almost by reflex, for that was what she could remember asking for ever since she was very young.

"_A sign like that? Lady, you are blessed indeed, that such a simple prayer could at least reach the infinite majesty of the Emperor himself! If that was what I think it was! Be exultant in your celebrations, for you are righteous indeed!_"

'Shut it,' Louise thought, feeling numb. The first time, the very first time she had ever seen anything that overt from her prayer... and it wasn't even really _her _prayer. She wanted to hear God, to have more than a great, hollow void out there listening to her prayers , and soaking them up with no response. And the King, Malfeas, the greatest of cities who filled her dreams with his glory, and made her feel all warm inside... he had listened. Maybe. That was fire like his, the same fire she wielded. Louise wasn't sure if it had come from her, or as acknowledgement from him. But... she hadn't wanted him to listen. She had wanted to hear God. Anything to shake this sudden uncertainty, this loss of self that swirled around her head like the night's sky.

"_Fairest lady, why act so surprised,_" Marisalon continued, any of her apparently-momentary sulk entirely gone. "_You are, by your very nature, one of the highest of all His priestesses. Your words pass to him in a way that mine could never had done so, for all that my kind are crafted of..._"

"I don't care," Louise whispered. "I... I just wanted to know... why?" With an exhalation, she began to play with her riding skirt again, squeezing out water from where it had soaked into it from the underbreeches. "Why?" she repeated, staring at the altar, with balled fists. "I... I don't know who she was. Why do I remember her?"

"_Who?_"

"So even you don't know," the girl muttered, sadly. "You're in my head. You never let me have a moment's peace. You blather on and on. And for this, this one thing... you don't know." Sharp spikes of pain in her palms told her that her nails were digging in, but she ignored them, letting her forehead slump forwards to rest in the altar. She was not exactly sure how long she waited there, but she was only roused from her thoughts by the click of riding boots behind her.

"My little Louise," Wardes announced proudly, a faint note of disappointment almost unnoticeable, "I was hoping that you would grace us with your presence."

Louise stood up again, dusting off her knees as she rose from before the altar. "Viscount," she said, inclining her head, as she tried not to meet his eyes. She could see that he was somewhat less presentable than his earlier state on the ride; his hair was mussed and there were dark splatters on his lower half. "I had to see to the altar. There may not be priests here anymore, but..." she dropped her gaze and swallowed, "well, it didn't feel right to leave it like this." She wasn't going to tell anyone of this. They'd just think she was going crazy, or was possessed by something, and...

... she wasn't sure how sane she was right now. But if people treated her like she was normal, then she was. She had to be.

"I was about to ask what you did to your skirts," the older man said, tilting his head. "And how you'd managed to get them wet. I hope you didn't fall in the fontal basin by accident. I think the local priests would have something to say about that, you know, desecrating a holy place through clumsiness!" He paused. "Well, they would if we could find any of them," he admitted. "They seem to have all fled, along with the commoners."

The girl played with her skirts, still not looking up, a blush dawning across her features. "I... um... had to get the altar right," she muttered, hastily adding, "Stand everything back up, like the brazier."

"And you did a very good job," Wardes told her, his expression, when she peeked up, earnest. "It is only through the grace of God and Founder that we are set above the commoners, to lead and guide them, and faith is the foundation of all things." Stepping over smartly, he took her hand, kneeling before her. "You did well," he said, kissing the back of her hand.

Louise merely stood there mutely, looking at his face only through how it filled her field of view. Then her nose wrinkled up, as the smell hit her.

"Ah, yes. Wyrm-blood has a distinctive odour," Wardes said, stepping back. "It is vile, but in its own way, it is the sweetest of smells, for it is a sign that you have wounded such a beast. And we did not merely wound it." He seemed to be looking for a response, as he added, hooking her arm around hers to lead her outside, "We slew it!"

The Earth Dragon was a long, wingless, once-sinuous thing, perhaps twenty metres long, but only two at its widest. Its long-snouted mouth was split in two, a sign of the magic which had killed it, and its multiple layered crystalline teeth could be seen in full through the shattered jaw. Its blackish-brown scales were irregularly shaped and sparse; most of its body was white and leathery, which glistened and gleamed in the afternoon light. And it stank of dead leaves and blood and something worse.

"That's wyrm-slime, the smell," one of the Griffin Knights said, as Louise stared, nose wrinkling. "They ooze it from their skin, and it rots down stone and metal, and makes fields die. It can wreck a sword if you're stupid enough to hit one... which of course, isn't a problem for us heroic mage-knights. Viscount," he continued, addressing Wardes rather than Louise, "we're just getting logs to rest it on, until the Geographers can get here to move the corpse." The man grinned, a sparkling white grin in his earth-smeared face. "The reward for this should help the celebrations after this mission is over?"

Wardes chuckled. "No doubt," he said, before sobering up slightly. "Of course, our honour depends on taking care of de Sirleaf's widow, and..." he stroked his beard. "Yes. Montesainte and Charles will need to wait here. We cannot wait for the time it will take for them to heal."

"'Tis only a flesh wound," managed the pale-faced man, slumped over on one of the benches, another knight beside him muttering Water spells.

The Viscount's eyes narrowed. "You know how wyrm-wounds go..." he glanced at Louise, "...bad, Montesainte" he said, changing the last word. "I won't have you risking your life in this way."

"But the mission..." the injured man began. "It's more important than anything! I may be injured, but I would die before betraying the Princess in any way! And failure is a little betrayal, in its own way!"

"I took more men than I needed for a reason," Wardes interrupted. "I suspected that we would take losses even before we got to La Rochelle, because this is the duty and honour of the Griffin Knights. You and Charles will wait here, along with de Sirleaf's body, and I will leave..." he paused, "... yes, de Secondat will have to stay. Just in case they worsen." The water mage nodded at that. "Good."

"Viscount, you're down four men that way!" Montesainte tried again. "At least take de Secondat with you! We can endure!"

"Are you questioning my orders?" Warde's tone was cutting.

The man swallowed. "... no."

"D-do you get used to friends dying?" Louise blurted out, for reasons she was not entirely sure of. It was something to do with... with the memories of memories, of this terrible feeling of age and loneliness and melancholy which she had never felt, but which she remembered feeling.

There was a pause, as the men stared at her. "Never," the injured Montesainte answered, with a frown. "The loss of even one of us is a tragedy!"

"Though that is not quite true," a paler man with red hair said, from behind the viscount. "It always hurts, yes. But..." he looked sympathetic, "... I feel that the first time you lose someone so close to you, it is the w..."

Wardes raised a hand. "That's enough, Trebourne. You don't need to horrify her; she's still young." He patted Louise on the shoulder. "It's always hard. But as the Griffon Knights, it is our duty to stay strong, and loyal, and so, yes, we must, with great sadness, repress our own feelings. But that," and there he shot a glance at Montesainte, "does not mean we enjoy it. So I am not going to let you get yourself killed out of misguided bravery. We have spent enough time here, and as soon as we can leave, we shall." A smile crept across his face. "Oh, and look," he added, looking over Louise's shoulder. "While we were killing an Earth Dragon, the ever-so-brave commoner musketeers have, as the culmination of their righteous quest, found us some meat for the Griffons. Such bravery indeed!"

The expression on the face of the corporal of the musketeers suggested that she had heard that, and her temperament had not notably improved by the time they had set off again, leaving the injured men behind.

* * *

{0}

* * *

By Viscount Wardes' orders, they were stopping early, before they got to La Rochelle. The Griffon Knights needed baths and changes of clothing, after their fight against the earth dragon, and, the man added, darkly, the approach to the airport was steep and mountainous; perfect ambush terrain. He was not prepared to risk it in the dark, not when there was adequately comfortable respite on root.

Louise, for her part, had remained quiet for the rest of the ride. With, on one hand, the strangeness which was happening to her – and her obstinacy in the face of Marisalon's nagging for more details, and on the other hand the knowledge that one of the brave knights who had set off with them was dead, she did not feel like talking. Dinner passed in a blur, and she did not respond to the Viscount Wardes' frequent attempts at conversation over dinner, which tasted bland in her mouth. No such constraints appeared to apply to Anne-Sophie, the musketeer dressed as an _inexprimé _noble, but even her relentless chattering appeared to fade in the face of Louise's silence.

Maybe she could have coped with one at a time; the strangeness of the vision and the altar, or the death of a man who, she had to admit, she had only met today. But with everything so close together, not to mention her first experience with real, close-up violence in the alleyway yesterday, it was too much.

Tonight she would be rooming with Anne-Sophie, with the other three musketeers close nearby, in the sub-room intended for a lady's maid. She could vaguely remember something from Wardes, with his smiles and his charms, some kind of offer, but from the way that the buzz of female voice had sounded, it seemed that the original arrangement was staying firm.

And so here she was, right now, properly paying attention for the first time all afternoon, because there was a wide assortment of weaponry lain out on the floor in front of her. And the older woman was stripped down to an undershirt, and sticking some kind of brush down the end of the barrel of a pistol. She was humming some kind of song as she did it, too, and as she listened, Louise felt that she could recognise the tune.

She shook her head, and forced herself to concentrate for once, mind flicking back to Mother's lessons. Stay calm and in control at all times. Never let your mind gather wool when it could be paying attention to the world around you. "What are those?" she asked, leaning forwards.

Anne-Sophie looked up with a start, her page-boy cut of pink-tinged blonde jerking in surprise. "Which things?" she asked. "The weapons?"

Louise tilted her head. "Yes," she said, pointing at the largest one, which rested on the other woman's thighs. "What are you doing?"

"Cleaning them," she explained, moving the largest weapon so it stood upright, on its stock. It wasn't small; a bit over a metre long, with a polished wood stock and high quality steel barrel. "The musket... that's the big one, has been in its case in my baggage, and hasn't been fired, but I'm checking it nonetheless, and making sure that the magelock is in position and secured properly."

"Magelock?" Louise asked, curiously. Her father was a Duke, after all, and a former commander, but he didn't talk about this sort of thing around his daughters. "What's that?"

The musketeer looked up. "There are different types of ways to fire a gun," she continued, pulling herself to her feet, and moving over to sit next to Louise on one of the bed. "These are magelocks; Her Highness has equipped her best troops with them, and they're awfully expensive. The back of the barrel is enchanted so it gets very hot when the trigger is pulled, and that sets off the blackpowder. Most of us only get flintlocks, which have a flint which sparks to set off the blackpowder... my pistols," she pointed down at the pair sitting down on the cloth, "are those. The regular army gets wheelocks... I heard the Germanians can afford to equip their men with flintlocks too, which is how they're doing so well 'gainst the Otmani peoples in the East. And in Albion... the rebels have the money, so they've bought lots of guns from Germania, when the royalists are having to use matchlocks sometimes, and they're only used by the worst sorts of troops. Well, them and Gallians, but," and she giggled, "I repeat myself." With care, she finished checking the musket, and wrapped it back up in its cloth, sliding it back into its case, and securing her pistols. "I didn't expect you to ask questions about it," she added, stiffening slightly. "Other... nobles that I've been assigned with haven't show any interest at all."

Louise shrugged. "They looked interesting," she said, still sitting there in her travel clothes, although she had discarded her jacket. "Some kind of Fire spell in the muskets, yes?" She had noted, already, that the musketeer spoke High Tristainain like a native, without a single trace of lower-class accent.

"Yes... well, it's actually fire-earth," the musketeer responded, with the same enthusiasm she had when she had been talking about the roads earlier. "With the Earth in it, it's longer lasting as an enchantment, and ignites all of the blackpowder all at once! It's wonderful! You can really feel the difference between it and normal flintlocks; it kicks immediately! And it leaves far less soot on the inside of the barrel, and extinguishes everything, so you can reload it almost instantly without having to worry about blowing your own hands off." She sighed. "I got to train with windpowder once," she said, dreamily, as she began to undress to change into her nightclothes. "There's ground-up windstones in the mix, so it doesn't even make smoke. Kicks like a mule, though, when you fire it, and it's loud."

"I see," said Louise, who didn't really, but didn't want to ask questions for fear that she'd only get more answers which answered nothing. Enough pride remained that she didn't want to be looked down on for ignorance by this commoner musketeer.

"_Mmm. Just look at the curve of her arm, the way that those muscles flex underneath. Fair lady, I must say that one flaw in the delectable maidens of your exquisite academy is that they are, in an uttermost misfortune, somewhat too slender and delicate, like fair flowers in spring. See? If you track the way that the strength of her arms curves back, and into her shoulder, down to the curve of her breast..._"

'Shut up!' Louise commanded, mentally. 'Honestly, how many times do I need to tell you? Girls don't... don't think about girls that way! Especially when they have a fiancé in the next room along!' She blushed. 'Or at any other time! And you've made enough trouble today, I think!'

Anne-Sophie glanced at her. "Are you feeling all right?" she asked, as she continued to unfasten her corset. "You look flushed... and you have been awfully quiet." The older woman's tone was more than a little exasperated as she added, "If you've gone and got yourself ill, we need to go find a local apothecary now. The Chevalier de Milan said your presence here is on the personal request of the Princess, so you're needed. You know, in a state that isn't fevered. Of course, the best cure for a fever depends very much on the circumstances. I read somewhere that some of the people in Gallia feed their sick people as much honey as possible, and then make them sleep in a cattle barn! Of course, people are odd in Gallia."

"I'm fine," Louise managed, half-turning away and dropping her eyes to focus on the laces of her own corset, ignoring the further insinuations and complaints of her coadjustor. It was better not to see how the older woman filled her undergarments rather better that she did. She might have not, even as a Tristainian adult, been as developed as Kirche, but the difference was quite embarrassingly clear. "Just..." she paused, "... just trying... trying to get this unlaced, and..." it slipped in her fingers, prompting a frustrated noise.

"_Ah, yes, ask her for help, her warm body pressed up against yours, and then you turn, lips melting __into..._"

"I'm fine! And don't need any help!" Louise blurted out.

"... okay," Anne-Sophie said, slowly, raising an eyebrow. She was, by no fully changed into her night-gown, and glanced momentarily out of the window, into the dark night beyond. "Um... I'm going to be reading for a bit," she said, pulling a book from her bag. "Just mention to me when you want the light out." She paused, tilting her head. "Oh, and just in case you forgot... um," the older girl reddened slightly, "towels and the like, I bought spares, so just ask. Sorry, I forgot to mention it earlier."

Louise nodded, biting her lip and blushed. "I'm fine," she said, honestly. She had bought her own, because she was late. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that she no longer needed to go to the toilet at all, and didn't seem to sweat. It would make sense, the lack of... that. Which, she was very sure, was something she was happy to see gone. Of course, even if this was somehow related to Marisalon being there, she was still prepared to spend some time thinking up some inventive punishments for her annoying head-familiar, there was no doubt about it! And some day she would find a way to implement them, yes!

And when the lights went out, and the two women in the room lay down to rest, the cry of night birds outside, Louise dreamt. She dreamt of rage, infinite rage, without mercy and surcease. Rage enough to burn a world! Rage enough to unmake time itself! But beyond the rage, there was the infinite expanses, and she fled to them, to lose herself in the timelike infinities of certain law and freedom from anger. But that was just as alien-yet-familiar to her, and her mind darted from mood to mood. Carefree joy in rose-showers of blood, cold passion and logic, the smothering love of the madness of the artist-mother, and even the degeneracy of the utter darkness; she wallowed in all of these, losing herself, and fled from all of these, searching for a Louise that she could not find. There was the golden memories of an ancient monster, too, in these depths, and they felt similar in a way that others did not, but she felt more fear nearing them, for this was a loss of self more absolute than any of the alien modes.

She cried out in fear, and fled again.

She _had _to build up her own power base, independent of Crown and Church alike. It was the only way to keep away from the fury, to keep her psyche intact. She knew this, with the same intensity with which she wanted to be a proper, respected mage. And then she sank again into the dreams, as she watched the fleets of the Lintha drift idly, lacking that which had powered them and she laughed, falling upon their useless hulks with the burning wrath of the sun, and she sat alone upon her throne, the world at her feet, and despaired.

A whimper, and Louise de la Vallière shifted over in her sleep, curling into a foetal ball. Her nails dug into her flesh, and left bloodied streaks upon the sheets, but she did not wake.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Close to the road that led to the place where Louise slept, there was a lonely camp. A simple tent was set up by a fire, burning under a mound of earth which protected it from the wind and concealed it from observers.

Huddled in blankets, the girl who called herself Tabitha sneezed, and shivered.

"You've gone and got ill, big sister!" the older-looking girl wearing a loose tunic exclaimed. "You should have been keeping yourself less sick!" Her feet were smeared with mud, for she wore neither shoes nor anything on her legs. She paused, and looked around, eyes wide in the night. "Oooh! An owl!"

Tabitha sniffled. "Go to the big bag," she said in High Gallian to her companion. She was considerably more fluent and verbose in her native tongue than in the High Tristainian she used at school. "Please, do it."

"'Kay!" The girl scampered childishly, despite the fact that she looked to be about twenty, and fully mature, to pick up the heavy satchel in one hand. "I found it! It's a bag! What now?"

"Yes, good." Tabitha wrapped her blankets tighter around herself. "Now, put it down carefully, without breaking anything. Open the top, and open the inner pocket. The one with the red cloth ties." That instruction was obeyed. "Bring me the cloth bundle there."

There was a sparkle of light as the other, taller girl touched it, and she flinched back, with a yelp. Tabitha muttered the countermagic, and the wards died.

"That wasn't very nice, big sister," the older girl said, as she bounded back over, bag in hand. "It stings!" She sucked at her fingers, pouting in a manner which, if any of boys from the Academy of Magic had seen her, would have earned her many admirers for just how adorable it was. "It's worse than bees! Oh, but honey is so tasty! It's worth getting some beestings in your mouth!"

Tabitha sniffed. "Sorry. Forgot." With shaking hands, she fumbled with the cloth ties, managing on the third time to get it open, revealing a row of vials, all stoppered and sealed with wax. Some of them glowed with strange colours. "Irukukwu," she said, addressing, the other girl, "can you go and get me some water, please? There is a river nearby. I will purify the water when you get it."

"Ooh! Okay! I can do it! Don't worry, big sister! You can trust me! I'm completely reliable! Don't die when I'm doing it!" She paused. "Um. Where's the water-holding thingie?"

"The canteen is by the fire."

Vessel in hand, the girl Tabitha had called Irukukwu bounced off, eyes wide. Despite the fact that it was dark away from the fire, she ran heedless through the woods, dodging trees and branches and thickets by the light of the two moons, both of which were almost full. And then she froze, suddenly unmoving. Before her eyes, a wolf trotted out, a magnificent beast with fur the colour of slate.

"I bought you water, big sister!" was the cry that heralded Irukukwu's return to the temporary camp. "And I got a snack!" Dragging the wolf behind her, blood smeared all across her mouth and down her front, the girl passed the now-full canteen to Tabitha. She sat down on the other side of the fire, humming happily to herself as she tore at the corpse with her teeth, coating herself with more gore.

Tabitha, for her part, muttered a short incantation over the water, drawing the fluid out into the cup which one layer of glowing fluid shimmered, oil-like, over another. She downed the cup, and shivered, but seemed to improve slightly. "Is... is it nice?" she asked tentatively, in a clearer voice.

"Mmem," the other girl hummed, tilting her head, as blood dripped down her chin. "It's all _right_. I guess. Wolf's sort of tough. And it better when it's left to hang for a bit. Or cooked. I wish Kirche was here! She's nice!"

"Yes," Tabitha said, softly. "She is."

The older girl tilted her head. "Big sister?" she asked, tentatively. "Um, um, um, um... do you want some wolf?" She paused. "Wait, I already asked that. Um, 'kay, 'kay. Um... oh yes! Why are we doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"Doing stuff! Like this! You know, with the following of the creepy green glowing girl and all those tasty griffons and stuff like that!" The girl tilted her head. "She's really very creepy and scary when she did the green glowing thing," Irukukwu confided. "The Rhyme says that that's not natural. Is that why we're having to follow her?"

"A bit," Tabitha said.

"Oh, 'kay," was the response. "Makes sense. I..." she froze again. "Carts. On the road. Heavily loaded. Heavy. Metal. Lots of metal... heavy metal." She sniffed. "Humans. Horses. Good horses. Pulling carts. Humans not quite human. Smell different. Scary smell."

Tabitha's response was instant, as she smothered the fire. And so the two girls sat together, as on the highway beyond, three heavy wagons passed through the night, heading onwards.

* * *

{0}


	11. 10: Dragons at Twilight

**A Green Sun Illuminates The Void**

**Chapter 10: Dragons at Twilight**

* * *

{0}

* * *

The sun was climbing up the eastern sky – though one of Eléanore's lectures had made it clear that the world was merely spinning upon its axis – and Louise de la Vallière was sitting half-slumped on her horse, staring at her hands rather than at the area around her. The girl was almost half-asleep, for her sleep last night had been broken and disturbed, and even the conversion-prattle of her attendant musketeer, who was pointing out the many ways that the windmills had been positioned to irrigate this steeper land, failed to rouse her.

She was merely glad that the way that she had got used to getting up early had both stopped the nightmares, and had given her enough time to hide her blood-stained sheets. The pink-haired girl groaned. If she was going to do that, she was doing to have to start wearing mittens to bed, to stop her clawing up her own palms. It wasn't that they didn't heal up before she even woke, but the blood was embarrassing. A cough and blush had been enough to implicate that it was that time of the month for her, but that would not be a permanent solution if she kept on doing it.

All things considered, Louise thought it was just the stress of travel, of being away from a known bed – and the manifold other stresses that she was subject to – which had caused her to do this. She hoped it was so, at least.

Half-roused from her slumber, she fumbled in a pocket for one of the rolls that she had secreted on her person at breakfast, and began to munch on it.

"Want a drink?" came a voice beside her, and Louise turned to face the musketeer Anne-Sophie, who was proffering a canteen. The pink-haired girl shook her head, and returned to munching on the bread, which did, overall, make her feel more human. Ahead of her, she could hear the corporal of the musketeers talking to Viscount Wardes, and even though she was not paying attention to the words, she could hear the simmering discontent in the woman's voice, which just hovered below the precipice of actionable insolence.

Speaking of actionable insolence, Marisalon had been mercifully quiet this morning. It was just as well. Louise was not talking to her, and if she had made a sustained effort to get Louise's attention, the girl wasn't quite sure what she would have done. And if she didn't know, that meant that her annoying perverted head familiar certainly didn't know.

So, for the moment, Louise merely sat back in her saddle, hat tilted forwards to keep the sun out of her eyes, and finished off her roll. She could feel the breathing of her animal below her, as the column climbed the hilly area, rising and descending but working their way upwards. Her feet felt grimy, even inside her riding boots; she was looking forwards to having a proper soak to work the caked-in dust out of her skin. It would be nice to get back to Meru. Resolving that had taken longer than she might have liked, and she just wanted to collapse for a few days. Another escape of some long-forgotten behemoth-beast from underground, and right on her holiday get-away. It was hard not to take it a little personally, and that was exactly what she suspected it was; personal. She knew the Three-Bladed Harp-Tongue of old, had torn out its string-tendrils and cast it into the Western ocean, and to think that it had regrown that quickly... she sighed, and ran a hand through her red hair, looking behind her to the still-screaming mass of flesh pulled on its litter, orichalcum spikes hammered through each of its fourteen fleshy legs, wrapped in the coruscating burning energies of the children of Hesiesh who guarded it, preventing it from regenerating the carapace she had flayed from its undying corpus.

"Come on," she called out, pitching and modulating her voice to instil enthusiasm and obedience. "Not much further!" Turning back around, she began to happily hum a ditty to herself.

Louise twitched awake. If she had been asleep. She really hoped that she had been asleep. Because if she hadn't been asleep... she looked around wildly, and was reassured by the lack of mysteriously moved altars, strange wastelands, or any of the other things that the... the girl shuddered... those odd, scary, ancient memories-that-were-not-hers seemed to do. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, before realising that her fiancé was talking to her.

"I said," Wardes repeated, "that, my dear Louise, if you look ahead, you will see La Rochelle."

"And were muttering to yourself in your sleep," someone else added, though Louise could not recognise their voice.

"We are just coming around Mont Saint-Henri," the man continued, ignoring the interruption, "and that should reveal... ah, yes."

Rising ahead of them, on the other side of the precipitous, broken landscape of hills and even mountains – the rugged coastal areas which stretched across much of northern Tristain, Germania and Gallia – was a great tree. Its trunk was the size of a small village, and its canopy was lost in the clouds that hung around it. Even the lower branches, which emerged below the trees, were large enough to have entire ports on them, and even from this distance, the flow of windship traffic could be seen, the multi-sailed ships following the air currents stirred up as the Great North Sea, just north of La Rochelle, met the land. This town was one of the most important ports of the north, the gateway to Albion, and it was all due to the height of Saint Orieris' Rise. This was not a mere tree. This was geography, politics and economics all in one.

"I have seen it before," Louise said, a slightly tart note entering her voice before she realised what that must sound like, and blushed. "I mean, when I was younger, my father took my eldest sister and me to Albion, for... I can't remember, trade negotiations I think. Cattleya was annoyed at being left behind, but I got her a present. I think I was about eight or so. And..." she trailed off, as she realised that she was now babbling. She was very sure that the fact that she was having strange possibly-waking hallucinations would excuse any momentary drop in her manners, if she were to tell anyone about them. Not that she was going to. She wasn't crazy, even if she was seeing things.

"How thoughtful," Wardes said, with a smile, as their column passed over a bridge, built over a tap root which bulged out of the ground two storeys high. "But, yes. From here, it will be about two hours to La Rochelle, proper."

"That long?" the girl asked. "But the tree looks so close."

"My dear," the man replied, "it's still a fair distance away. It is merely very large."

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was indeed mid afternoon before the riders made their way up the last incline, passing over a delicately fluted bridge that was grown from the rock by the careful tending of earth mages, and through the steep gorge to the walls of La Rochelle itself. Wardes and the other knights were on edge, and unasked-for instincts reminded Louise that this canyon, precipitously steep and craggy, would be an ideal ambush point. However, they passed through unmolested, and entered the town, with no more that casual acknowledgement from the guards. They knew well enough not to interfere with nobles.

"Alan," the Viscount said, inclining his head graciously to the commoner guards at the gatehouse, "secure the rooms, and ensure that the ship is readied for departure."

"Aye," responded his second-in-command, who then began giving commands to the other knights. As the men began to peel off, following his orders, he pulled his griffin up to Wardes, and tilted his head. "Jean," he said, softly, taking advantage of the relative privacy. "I think we are being watched. Tracked."

The other man's grey eyebrows rose, but he did not look around. "You say?"

"Indeed. There are... feelings. Remember how it was in Alsace? I feel on edge." He dropped his voice further. "And I mistrust the clouds," he said, voice barely audible over the noise of the town. "There was one, behind us, which does not move right. I was not sure until we reached Mahors, but the clouds come southwards, down from the Great North Sea, and they break to rise against La Rochelle. It moved against the flow. I have not seen it since then, but..."

"Dragon?" Wardes said, his lips barely moving.

"Indeed. No-one would use a manticore... maybe a pegasus, but they lack endurance over long distances. Most probably it would have to be a wind dragon, too, with a skilled rider to maintain his concealment like that. A fire dragon could not keep up such height, with such skill to hide among the clouds; we both know they prefer to stay lower."

"Can you say how long you have been seeing it? How long has it been following us... if indeed it is?"

"I cannot, no. I only noticed it this morning, but I did not truly begin to suspect it until noon. It was cloudier yesterday, so..."

"Indeed, it could have been hiding then," Wardes agreed. He sighed, rolling his eyes. "Well, I cannot list all the people who might want to have a column of Griffin Knights followed. Passage is booked on the decoys, yes?" he asked, glancing at Louise.

"Aye, indeed. I will be making sure to be nice and obvious when we badger the captain of the _Ascension _about his lateness, when we must be off to Germania to handle that damnable controversy over the ambassador."

"Good, good." The grey haired man adjusted his hat. "See to it," he told his subordinate. "I'll take Guifort and de Cahors with me."

"Understood."

Turning his griffin, Wardes rode up to the horses, his gaze flicking over the musketeers to focus on Louise. "My Louise," he said, "I would be honoured if you would accompany me around La Rochelle."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise could not help but stare a little as, the clatter of her horse's hooves almost drowned out by the sounds of La Rochelle, they headed into the town. Anne-Sophie and the other musketeers were following along behind. She could vaguely remember the strangeness from the time she had been here before, but she had been much younger then, and excited at getting to go to Albion with her father. Now that she was older, she could appreciate how the town was quite unlike any others she had seen. The town was dug directly into the canyons and cracks that criss-crossed this area of Tristain, high and cold compared to the temperate, flat lands that made up most of the nation. As a result, where other towns and cities would have buildings, La Rochelle had cliffs. The oldest dwellings in the city were natural recesses and caves, but civilisation had expanded, as it always did, and so in the wider canyons, buildings protruded seamlessly from the front of the rockface. Indeed, despite the slow growth imposed by the whim of the nobility, it had still been necessary, in some cases, to make all new canyons, and those were the broad, well-shaped ones which could almost pass for a street in Bruxelles if it were not for the extreme height of the buildings. There was pronounced asymmetry in the streets, too; south-facing buildings were the ones with the windows, save for in a few, rich streets, where mirror-bright arrays had been installed to alleviate the perpetual shade in parts of this broken landscape.

To the south, the vast tree known as Saint Orieris' Rise which had according to legend been planted by the patron saint of Gallia, a contemporary of Founder Brimir himself, dominated the skyline. It was for the best that the town was built where it was, for if it had not been, it would have been in near perpetual twilight; as it was, even over the strange structure of the town, the northern sky was filled with the evergreen foliage. The lower branches were the ones where the leaves had been stripped off, and what could only be described as a small town was built up in the heights; the stone capillary towers, built long ago, that lifted men and cargo alike up and down through carefully maintained magic were in near-constant use.

"_Interesting,_" Marisalon said slowly, in the back of her head, and the pink-haired girl gritted her teeth at the first comment from the neomah all day.

'I am _ignoring _you,' the girl thought as hard as she could, trying not to let any irritation show on her face. 'You are insolent, perverted, and contribute nothing of value!'

"_That certainly looks like an Eastern arrangement... but you don't appear to know about, or have the element of Wood here. What makes trees like that grow so big?_"

Well. That was acceptably... non-perverted. Replying to things like that might encourage her to be less annoying. 'Oh,' Louise thought. 'The Rise is only the largest one of trees like that. It's a yew tree, I think... yes, it is, because I remember that wood from the Rise was one of the things that made the Glorious Century so glorious, because yews normally grow very slowly. They could use wood from the smaller branches to make much better bows than the Easterners or the Gallians could make, and in much larger numbers.' She blinked, and realised that she was sounding rather like her big sister. 'All along the northern coast, trees just grow larger. Viscount Wardes said that a smaller port in Vajours... his domain... has a young pine tree that's apparently growing like that, too. They need to keep Earth Dragons away; they eat the roots.'

There was a pause. "_Fair maiden, thank you for that information,_" the voice said, caution evident in every word. "_That is an acceptable topic of discussion, then?_"

'Look, use your common sense! Just show some manners, and don't be rude!'

"_I see._" Once again, there was careful neutrality.

'You may be used to strange places where people with strange names do perverted things to each other, but this isn't that kind of place! Just... show some dignity, and I won't have to shout at you and ignore you!'

"_Then, fairest lady, I will, as you most eloquently put it, 'show some dignity'. Your fiancé is talking to you._"

Louise blushed, as she noticed that once again, she had zoned out. Looking around, they were in what appeared to be an upper class area; certainly it was less refined than Bruxelles, but the tall buildings with their glass windows and carefully painted frescos shielded from the harsh winds that blew here in winter spoke of money. "I'm dreadfully sorry," she said, her voice unconsciously slipping to sound now more like her older sister Cattleya, "but could you please repeat that?" She put on a smile.

"This is the Rue des Merveilles, my little Louise," Wardes said. One gloved hand gestured around him. "Did you know most of the gems and gold in Tristain comes from the north coast? The landscape makes it so much easier to mine, without having to worry about the water table or other such concerns? That's probably why there are so many mercenaries around here, in the streets; they often see hire to protect shipments... and raid them when they are short of coin." Louise nodded. She did know that; her family had notable interests in these areas, although she hadn't really noticed any more mercenaries around. Not that she was an expert in such things, of course; certainly not compared to the viscount. "And so," he continued, "this street has more than a few artificers specialising in such things." In one motion, he swung down off his griffin, before stepping over to help Louise down. "I thought the two of us might like to look around. Of course," the man added idly, as, one hand around Louise's waist, he lowered her to the ground, barely straining, "this is not really suitable for horses. But I'm sure these..." his eyes flicked over the musketeers, "... commoners won't mind caring for the animals, will they?"

Despite his elegantly raised eyebrows, this was in no way a suggestion, and everyone present knew it, so the corporal of the musketeers took the reins of Louise's horse despite her thunderous expression. Louise, blushing furiously at the warmth feeling of his arms around her waist as she was helped down, took his offered arm, but half-turned, to say to Anne-Sophie, "Please, come with me. It wouldn't be proper to be doing this alone like this."

"Of course, my lady."

Wardes strolled along the narrow street, his gait easy and speaking of confidence. "The weather looks good," he remarked, with a glance upwards. "It looks like the southerly winds are slowing, and that should make the trip easier." Louise, who knew almost nothing of windship navigation, nodded. "I've been in more storms than I'd like, and it's so draining to have to still then," he added, with deliberate idleness.

"That is most impressive, Viscount."

"Oh, it is nothing, really. Certainly, I cannot rival what I have seen your mother do," Wardes paused, in front of a shop-front trimmed with red bunting emblazoned with the iconography of the de Cahors _inexprimé _house. "And what I believe you will be able to do," he added, glancing down at her.

"I..."

"Shush," he said, gently. "Mmm. This craftsman looks skilled... of course, the de Cahors have their links to such things to favour them. I do believe that we shall examine their wares."

The interior of the shop kept the same prominent house colours, but behind the counter were tastefully attached several seals from older, more respectable noble families, speaking of their patronage. Louise let out a slow breath, her inhalation catching the mixed scent of wax and coffee. Her mental calculation of the prices that this place would be charging was only reinforced by that, if they could afford, and chose to give coffee beans, imported from the Otmani lands to the east, or otherwise grown by a few mages in highly expensive greenhouses, to their clients. And she strongly suspected that her purse for this term would not cover jewellery purchases.

"_And that is why it would be best to acquire an independent source of income and power,_" came the inevitable voice in her head.

'Shut up,' she thought. "Fairly elegant," she said, out loud, to Wardes, trying to affect an air of jaded maturity.

"I am most glad you think that," the man replied. "Do you not agree that it is elegant, musketeer?" he said.

Anne-Sophie nodded. "I would say so," she said.

"Good. These are exquisite," he said, to the shop-keeper, a middle-aged man in clothes that indicated that he was a prosperous commoner, which mimicked the nobility's style, but lacked a mantle. "Which would you say is an example of your best work?"

The other man paused, and adjusted the set of his sleeves, almost idly. "Ah, my lord," he said, after a moment's consideration. "That would depend on your personal preferences. Why not sit, and drink some coffee with me, while we discuss these matters?"

"I will do that," Wardes replied. "My dear Louise, I will be a few minutes. Please, sit," he said, with a gesture to the seats in this room, before disappearing into a back room with the trader.

With a sigh of relief, Louise sunk down into one of the seats, smoothing down her riding skirts, the Staff of Destruction resting on her shoulder. Slowly, gently, she leant, so her head was resting against the cloths bound around slightly chill metal of its shaft. More than anything, the pink-haired girl wanted a bath and a change of clothes, to get into something lighter and more fitting. She might not sweat any more, but her horse certainly had, and she wanted to see what clothes had been packed for her. If she could get that done early enough, it would be possible to send the servants at the hotel out if they proved unsuitable – or, indeed, ill-fitting. The girl shot a sideways glance at Anne-Sophie. The musketeer was annoyingly unmussed by the travel, and she managed to make the travelling clothes look better; no doubt because her clothes sat better on her mature female form.

Newborn instincts led her to flinch away, but there was no word from the neomah, and Louise felt a small flare of self-satisfaction, as she opened her eyes again.

"You're... sixteen, aren't you?" Anne-Sophie asked, out of the blue.

"Yes. Why?"

The other woman lowered her head slightly, looking at Louise from under her short-cut blonde-pink fringe. "Oh. No reason." She paused. "If you don't mind me asking... do you like the Viscount de Vajours?"

"Viscount Wardes?" Louise licked her lips nervously, before realising that she was doing it. "Of course. He's my fiancé, and he's the captain of the Griffin Knights, and... and what's not to like?"

"Mmm. Yes. He's the sort of man that maidens across the kingdom dream of." Another, slightly too long pause. "And... I don't suppose you've had any... you know," Anne-Sophie said, dropping her voice, leaning it, "... any sweethearts before?"

"Of course not!" the girl replied, crossing her arms, and squaring her jaw. "Not only would it be wrong, when I'm engaged – indeed, it would always be wrong, prior to marriage! But, yes, it's not like any of the boys at school are worth anything! Or would talk to me, anyway," she added, more softly.

"Of course, of course." From the set of her mouth, the musketeer had got whatever she was looking for. "This is a wonderful place," she continued, looking around, eyes lingering over an ornate teardrop pendent. "Ah, well."

Louise was reminded, once again, of the musketeer's perfect High Tristainian accent, unlike the others in her party, and the way that she seemed to fit the role of a noble so well. She had certain suspicions about her, but at the moment they were suppressed by her own curiosity over what Anne-Sophie had been aiming for with that line of approach. She could... Louise stopped herself, because even _thinking _about asking her head-familiar for advice was something that she was trying to avoid, doubly so when it was about a not-unpretty female, because the perverted thing would always take things the wrong way and provide advice which was, at best, useless. So, instead, she said, "I can't wait to change out of these travelling clothes. I think I've gone a bit soft in the school uniform, which, for all that it's _freezing _in winter, is light and airy... sometimes a little too airy."

"Maybe." The other woman blinked. "I mean, yes," she corrected herself. "I say, the layout of this town is really interesting. I wonder how many of the canyons are actually natural, and how they stop the streets from flooding in winter... because you can see where gullies have formed. Mind you, La Rochelle is rich, so it can probably afford these sort of things, but I do believe that some outlying towns and the like along the north coast are like that... I wouldn't know, myself, I'm from the south, near the Gallian border and..."

Louise sat in silence, pretending to pay attention to the almost-soothing babbling of the pink-blonde woman, waiting for Viscount Wardes to return so they could take their rides to the hotel. The only thing keeping her eyes open was the worry that she might dream the not-her dreams again.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Apparently, earlier in the day, there had been a column of Griffin Knights, entering the town. Pierre du Bois, one of the guards on duty on the formal city walls of La Rochelle, wished that something interesting like that could happen. Or maybe even that a small army, one which could easily be defeated by him in an afternoon, might attack. Not like that would be likely, at least from this approach. The narrow roads leading through the broken terrain that led to La Rochelle were not friendly to armies – as the Gallians had found thirty years ago, according to his father, and, when it came down to it, unless they had lots of fliers or powerful Earth mages, all they would need to do would cut the bridges and pick them off with cannonfire.

He sighed again, and shifted the weight of the highly polished shield resting on his arm. Instead, all that he really had to do was to check carts coming through, and question people who looked suspicious. And no-one had the decency to wear highly visible suspicious black cloaks, or turn out to be Germanian saboteurs with long curly moustaches and a distinct smell of blackpowder.

It was so _boring._

"Hey, Jacques," he said, to the man beside him, pointing at the sky. "Does that cloud look like a dragon to you?"

The other man gave that thought due consideration. "Nah," he eventually concluded. "Look at it. That's gotta be a naked lady."

Pierre squinted at him. "Um. No, look. There's the neck, and there's the legs, and there's the wings..."

"Wings? Look, she's facing the other way. Those are her..." Jacques looked down, and blinked. "Look sharp, we got nobles coming." With that, the two men straightened up, and adjusted their shields, emblazoned with the Montmirail crest, so it was clearly seen. There would be the devil to pay if they 'embarrassed' their lord in front of a noble.

If it was a noble, Pierre thought, dubiously. The older one, a blue-haired woman of about twenty or so, was certainly dressed well, in a belted tunic, a long skirt, and gloves, but she didn't have a mantle, and there was a certain... roundness, a certain childishness about her face which gave him the odd feeling that she was younger than her physique would suggest; something which was supported by the wide-eyed way she was looking around. And her boots were almost clean of dust from the road, too, yet he could see no sign of a carriage. Her companion was tiny, a mere child probably barely into her second decade – although nobles aged oddly, compared to common folk, and looks could be deceptive – with similar hair tucked under a hood and mantle, swaddled in blankets despite the warmth of this spring morning. Her boots, notably, were covered in dust.

Carefully, he stepped forwards. "Morning, milady," he said, trying to sound as professional as possible. "May I ask your..."

"Do you know who I am?" the woman exclaimed in a notable Gallian accent, grinning widely. "I am the daughter of the Duc du Lot! And this is my sister, who is also his daughter! How dare you bar our way!" Her words were somewhat stiff and almost rehearsed, although that, he thought, was most likely because of her unfamiliarity with the language.

The guard's hand twitched, into an instinctual salute. She certainly looked like a noble, with the blue hair and the complexion, and general Gallian-ness of her would explain why she wasn't dressed properly – for Pierre took it as an article of faith that all Gallians were a bunch of strange foreigners who had strange barbaric ways. And the younger girl, with the glasses, which were alone a sign of wealth and nobility, clearly looked like her sister. It wasn't done to waylay nobles. They might complain about you, and that was bad if you were a commoner guard. "My apologies, milady," he said, hastily. "But... and I mean this with all respect, we're meant to ask everyone what business they have here."

"Oh, is that it?" the young woman said, perking up even more – if such a thing was possible. "My sister's sick! Really sick! She's got a temperature and is coughing and sneezing _all _the time and we're travelling and I'm not a water mage and although she is, she's too sick to heal her sickness because she's sick. See! So we need to find a healer who can help so she can get better and heal herself!"

Pierre squinted. The younger girl clearly did look ill, half-supported by her sister, with a flushed face, and she seemed not to be focussing properly on the world around her. "Oh, I see, milady," he said, carefully. "I hope she gets better, and..."

"She's so silly!" the older girl exclaimed exuberantly, bouncing up and down on her toes. She was still smiling in the same way, and it was starting to disturb the man. "She went and got ill and now she's all ill and not well so I have to look after her and so we've ventured long and hard and... long, to come here to find a doctor." She paused, presumably for breath. "Where's a doctor?"

Certain instincts kicked in, and told Pierre that his job was not worth obstructing a noble like this, who was going to keep on smiling whether she was demanding things of him or acting... well, strange. If he told her where a doctor was, then she would go away and stop smiling at him with that slightly-too-wide, inappropriate smile. And if she caused trouble, at least it would not be _his _trouble. "There's an apothocarium down Rue de Saint de Couteaux," he said, hastily adding, "milady. It's run by the de Militaire House, though, so I am sorry if it is not up to your standards, but it have doctors and the like."

"Okay," the strange noble lady said cheerfully, in her heavily accented Low Tristainian. "Thank you thank you!" And then, to his surprise, and the disbelief of his colleagues and drinking buddies, this aristocrat then stepped towards, pushing aside his sword and shield, and gave him a big hug, her generous bosom pushed up against his chest, before springing off to take her younger sister's hand.

Pierre du Bois watched them go, eyes wide, as the older one chattered to the sick one in some foreign language, hardly getting any responses back. One hand went to his chest, to massage the spot where she had embraced him. She had smelt of... of flowers, but with a coppery undertone. And she had been so warm and soft and... the man shook his head, focussed off somewhere in the middle distance.

He grinned widely. The day hadn't been so bad after all.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"... and then, if I understand correctly, the artisan wells serve, in the dry months, to drain the landscape, which is all due to a really rather clever enchantment on the drainage channels and so..."

Eyelids heavy, Louise shifted her hands, and, taking as much care as possible not to cut herself on her nails or rip her clothes, squeezed her calves as hard as she could. The fogginess in her mind drifted away slightly, but she knew she was losing the battle against sleep. She was tired, the musketeer's babble was almost like a lullaby, quite unlike one of Elénore's lectures, and it was warm in this shop front, the magical lights also serving to heat the place. When all of that was combined with the fact that she was sitting down on a moderately soft seat, it was a constant battle to remain awake. But she couldn't let herself fall asleep. Not only would it be rude, but if she slept... well, she didn't want to. Not if she could avoid it.

But it was enough of a challenge that she was almost contemplating asking Marisalon a question, any question, so she could at least have another voice to listen to. At the very least, if she got angry at her head-familiar it would help her stay awake. Only her pride was stopping her from doing that, and that had its limits, in that...

"I do apologise for the delay; the negotiations went on rather longer than I had expected."

Salvation came, as Wardes returned with the shopkeeper. Straightening up, slightly, Louise caught sight of a velvet-wrapped box in his hand, about the size of a man's fist; he held it carefully upright.

"_There is something in his pocket that was not there before_," Marisalon added. "_Unless he's just pleased to... no, I think it's square. Yes, that was most certainly not there before._"

Louise regarded that comment with suspicion, but chose not to reply. "It was no problem," she assured the viscount, putting on a smile. A little warm glow ignited in her heart when he smiled in return.

"No, it was my fault but, on the other hand, I do hope that you can forgive me when you see what I was doing. For you," he said, bending down on one knee to offer her the velvet-wrapped box.

Louise flushed bright red. "V-v-viscount," she stammered, mind frozen. "I'm... I can't... I..." and then she paused, as he opened the box with a snap. She let out a small sigh of relief at the sight that it was not, as she had expected from his behaviour, a ring, but that it was instead a necklace. She took several deep breaths, steadying her nerves, and gulped down air, before examining it closer.

The necklace was an exercise in wonderfully filigreed metalwork. On the black velvet of the interior of the box, it gleamed like starlight, the silver pendant composed of many intricate subparts held together by nearly invisible chains. Pride of place, an arrangement of five pink pearls, whose nacreous shimmer caught and grabbed the eye, sat arranged into a Brimiric pentacle. It was, by Louise's estimate, intended to sit a few fingerspans below the top of her breastbone, at the top of what cleavage she could muster, accentuating but not drawing attention to it.

"_Fair lady, that is... hmm, exquisite quality for mortal craftsmanship. And I do believe that those pearls have been selected specifically to go with your hair and eyes, for they will do so with uttermost taste and dignity._" There was approval in the neomah's voice as she added, "_Your fiancé has an eye for style, my princess of the green sun._"

"This is a lavalier," Wardes said, with a gesture. "I do believe that it is named after an ancestor of yours, yes?"

"Viscount," Louise said, her eyes widening in surprise, as she stared down at the necklace, tilting her head this way and that to watch the colours in the pearl shift, "this is beautiful! It's a... well, an incredibly generous gift! I really can't..."

"Louise," he said gently, reaching out to brush back a lock of her hair, "you are my fiancé, my beloved. I insist; it will look good on you. I picked it out for that specifically. And... my dear Louise, I feel you should perhaps be a little less coy. It does not become you."

The pink-haired girl blushed, and thought of protesting, but it would do no good. It really was beautiful, and even if it was slightly improper to give this directly to her in this manner, it was only _slightly _so, and that surely made it acceptable. "Then I would be delighted to accept your gift, my lord," she said, nodding, fingers already reaching for the catch at the back of the lavalier.

"Allow me," he said.

There was a moment's pause before Louise handed the necklace back to Wardes. With practiced fingers, he smoothly unhooked it, and motioned for her to turn around. Two blue-grey clad arms reached around her, the warmth of his body at her back present even through her clothing. The girl felt his breath against the top of her head, the fabric of his arm against her cheek, and the sudden weight of the necklace against her breastbone. Blushing pinkly, Louise tried to think proper thoughts, and silently blessed the fact that he was behind her. She could _feel _Marisalon's amused contentment, too, despite the silence of the neomah, and that only deepened her flush. Delicately, gently he brushed her hair back, white gloved hands soft leather against the nape of her neck as he did the catch back up.

"Th-thank you," she stammered, falling back to formality to avoid having to think, "I d-don't think I could have done it that easily m-myself." She could not help but spin in place, feeling the new weight of the pendant against her chest even through her clothes. The shopkeeper proffered a mirror, and she admired herself in the silvered surface, noting how, yes, as her head-familiar had pointed out, it set off her eyes and her hair nearly perfectly. "Don't you think it looks wonderful?" she said, turning to show it to Anne-Sophie.

"It's nice, yes," the musketeer said, with a smile which Louise could not but feel did not reach her eyes. "It matches you well."

"I think so, too," she responded, determined not to let the commoner's opinions get in the way. "Viscount, I really must thank you personally. I... I don't have my writing kit with me, not properly, but as soon as we finish this, I will be writing you a note of gratitude as fast as I can and... well, thank you."

"Your happiness is all I need," Wardes said, simply. "It can be worn under clothes, too, so it need not be too obvious or risk getting caught. Now, jeweller," he said, half-turning to face the man, "I do believe we shall take your leave. We have a few more things to do before evening... do you have the right clothes for cold and wet Albion, my dearest Louise?"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Much like the rest of the city, the hotel was a solid building of stone, grown in an almost organic manner from the walls of the broken terrain by the concerted efforts of many mages. It was a thing of pride that the walls of La Rochelle required no mortar. Compared to the dwellings of the poor, though, this building was far more prominent, less embedded into the cliff walls. Fluted columns entwined around a grandiose façade, only to separate again to support the terraced gardens on the roof and dug into the cliff-face above, smoothing off the jagged canyons with the works of civilisation.

Inside, Louise reclined in one of the ladies baths on one of the upper floor, letting the warmth soak into her muscles, eyes unfocussed as she stared out a window. With a yawn, she let out a contented sigh. This felt good, and no mistake, to wash away the dust of the road and the smell of horses and griffins – the chimeric animals smelt rather like large, male cats. One hand went to her neck, to her new lavalier, which she had kept on. It really was beautiful, and Viscount Wardes had been incredibly generous to buy it for her. He might have protested that it was merely his duty as her fiancé, but she had a strong feeling that she owed him more than a mere thank you note. The girl wasn't sure if she had ever been given something quite so nice and... well, so adult; she had more childish pieces of jewellery from her parents, but that was a woman's necklace. And it had minor enchantments on it so that the chain would never break and it would not tarnish with age, too, so it could be hers forever!

A second yawn accompanied her sinking deeper into the warm water, which shifted to her blowing bubbles as her hair fanned out, veil-like, around her in the water.

Thirty minutes later, Louise emerged, wrapped in towelling, brush in hand, bare feet against the magically-heated stone of the room she was sharing with Anne-Sophie again. Deliberately, she headed over to the south-facing window, where whoever had appointed this room had thoughtfully placed cushioned seats, built so that it was overlooking one of the hotel's courtyards. In one had she had a comb, and in the other, a knife. There was no sign of the other woman, but, then again, she had bathed quickly, and with her short, almost boyish hair, she probably didn't even need to bother with how long it took to dry. That was not a privilege that Louise could afford herself. Her pale pink hair, its colour a sign of the strength of her bloodline, was one of her best features, everyone told her, and it was almost identical to Mother's and Cattleya's... to Elénore's jealously. She was rightfully proud of it, but at the length it was currently at, it took rather annoyingly long to dry. Sitting herself down, the girl began to carefully brush it, and found it pleasingly untangled.

"_Probably my influence,_" Marisalon said, smugly.

'You were bald,' Louise pointed out.

"_Only by default. I am of the neomah. We can look how we like, as long as we look like neomah. Some like hair, and so we can fulfil those desires._"

There was a pause. 'I don't think I wanted to know that,' the girl thought.

"_Why not? You think your hair is attractive, do you not, fair lady? Would you not consider it unpleasing to your aesthetics if you were to become forever bald?_"

'That's different!' Louise thought angrily, before yelping out loud, as the comb caught in a knot when she pulled too hard.

"_Whatever you say, my mistress._"

Once her hair had been judged to have been sufficiently dealt with, Louise picked up the knife she had bought over with her, the steel edge glinting and sighed, eyes drifting out the window to check if anyone was watching her. Oh, she thought to herself, so that was where Anne-Sophie and the other musketeers were; doing some sort of practice on the rooftop garden that her shared room overlooked. Well, they certainly weren't doing a very good job of protecting her down there, she thought, slightly self-righteously, before remembering that she _could _set people on green fire, and blast them with flaying winds. Like... l-like she had those _vile _commoners who had tried to mug her.

She shook her head, and shifted her attention back to what she had been planning to do for a while. With care, she scraped the steel blade across the tip of the brassy fingernail of her left index finger, scarping off a thin shaving, before straightening out her hand, and checking it again. It didn't look deformed, did it? She was scraping evenly? And... Louise winced as she felt the tip... well, at least it wasn't _any _sharper, and it had to be shorter, right?

In her opinion, the answer was 'Yes' to all of her questions, and so she continued, slowly working away. It was slow, tedious work, however, and inevitably her attention drifted over to the musketeers, as the sole interesting thing she could see from the window. No doubt Elénore would have had all sorts of things to say about the rock strata she could see; with her current mindset, the way that those... those commoner girls were practicing with bayonet-fitted muskets, which were basically short spears, was rather more intriguing.

Louise de la Valliere knew that it was wrong to be thinking this, but... what they were doing actually looked like... well, fun.

No! They were commoners, and they were using bayonets, which were an ugly, inelegant weapon; a mockery of proper blades made so people who lacked the ability to use proper magic could protect themselves after getting their one shot off. Everyone knew that! They were a tool for the rank infantry, not even the non-noble horsemen! And... Louise noticed that her gaze was locked on them again, and she shifted, focussing intently on her nails. Thin brass shavings were being removed with each scrape but... she winced... how was she meant to stop them being sharp?

There was a pause.

'Marisalon,' she thought. 'That was a question.'

"_Oh,_" came the response. "_... why would you want to do that? My lady, long nails are a sensual sign, a sign of civilian elegance in the Scarlet Dynasty – for they are both a sign that one need not labour, and a last weapon in times of emergency. Likewise, in the city, only the very youngest or most gauche among the neomah have not learned the many ways of decorating one's nails, and the subtle codes that can be hidden on them._"

"I just want to stop scratching myself," the girl complained out loud. "It ruins clothes and it _hurts_."

'_That just takes care and attention,_' said the neomah, '_and, fairest lady, you are talking out loud. Now. I must ask you, my lady, why are you being so stubborn about not indulging in your obvious desire to interact with those other less-fair-than-you women, in their weaponplay? They are interesting, are they not? Might you not learn something?_' she asked, as Louise's gaze drifted over to the way that, with blunted bayonets fixed, Anne-Sophie and the corporal were drilling some kind of parrying move.

Louise sighed, putting down the knife gently on the floor, and brushed the brass shavings off, hugging her knees. 'I...' she began. 'I shouldn't be interested in such thing.'

"_Why not?_" This appeared to be genuine confusion. "_Your society is proud of its warriors, and there are woman among them. You think often of your mother, who is apparently a great champion... she __sounds fascinating, actually; somewhat like an acquaintance of one of my mistresses, who was from another one of the Great Houses. You, yourself, have been perfectly content with the practice of your heavy-bladed spear. Why be so virulently against the practice of a short spear?_"

'Because it's a commoner weapon!'

"_Would it be better if it was just a spear? Or a sword, like that corporal carries?_"

Louise paused. 'Yes,' she managed, eventually. 'It would.'

"_Why?_"

'Because! Shut up!' There was only a fraction of a pause before she continued, 'It wouldn't be bad for me to learn to use a wand-sword, or use the Staff of Destruction as a glaive-staff, and both of those things are like normal weapons, so you can practice with the techniques! But... but... but the bayonet is just a bayonet! There's nothing like it! Having to learn it means that you don't have magic, because no proper magician would learn to use a musket or... or any other longarm! Only a weak-blooded degenerate who can't rely on their magic would know that sort of thing! And... and I am not an _inexprimé_!'

"_...yes. That is correct, my beautiful, fair princess of the green sun,_" Marisalon said, her voice soft.

'That's what they'd say, though,' Louise whispered, burrowing her face in her knees. 'They'd say that I'm doing it because I'm a Zero! Because I have no useful magic and am useless and stupid and weak!'

"_Why not challenge them to a duel, like you did to that most interesting blonde girl? After all, you seem to get on with her acceptably now, and she is quite attractive._"

There was no response to the attractiveness comment. "Because you can't just challenge people," Louise muttered out loud. "You used to be able to, in the old days, but it's not allowed any more. And... I can't fight everyone who whispers behind my back. That's almost everyone." She sniffed, and wiped her face on the towel she was wearing. "Yes, that's right," she declared, more loudly, voice quavering, but a sudden new strength and arrogance in her voice. "They _already _say that of me! Why can't I do it! It's not like it will get back to school! Why should I care! What does it matter!" Jaw squared, she pulled herself to her feet. "I will go down there, and I will watch them, and then I will do it better than them! They're only commoners, after all; how hard can it be? And I _have _been practicing with the Staff of Destruction." Rummaging through the bags which contained the change of clothing, she found fresh underwear, and a loose-fitting corset, deciding on a practical, lightweight dress.

"_My mistress,_" Marisalon said, sounding delighted, "_that is much more like the spirit. See what they do, the tricks they use, and learn them yourself! Improve yourself in every way, so that you might be more prepared for your duties as a princess of the green sun!_"

"I'm not doing this because you want me to," Louise stated, clearly, as she stared at herself in the mirror, pinning her wet hair back behind her head. "I'm doing it because..." she trailed off, somewhat ruining the emphatic statement. "Just because."

"_Whatever you say, my lady,_" the neomah said weakly. "_And remember, don't talk out loud when you're around other people._"

"I know that!"

* * *

{0}

* * *

On the other side of the town, there was a hotel largely occupied by members of the lesser nobility involved in trade and other such merchants. It was no wonder that two women travelling together might get a room there, especially if they were Gallian. There were a not-inconsiderable number of traders from that nation there, which may have been why they were guided to that place. Their lack of baggage meant that they had settled in fairly easily, and, looking mildly worried, the older one of the self-declared sisters – who was rather easy on the eyes – had gone out, after asking details about the market and local doctors. That had been around an hour ago; now she had returned, with that same, slightly overwide smile on her face, and a spring in her step. With the key provided, she opened the door to their room, and carefully shut it behind her.

Collapsing down in the room, shedding clothing as she went until she was left only in a tunic, Irukuwa pouted. "See the things I do for you, Big Sister!" she exclaimed. "I had to go and talk to lots of people and wear the itchy formal clothing and it was _very hard work_, I'll have you know. And I had to find the doctor and give them that note you wrote which explained things and then I had to pay money and I did the counting thing and it all worked!" She raised a finger, as a sudden moment of inspiration struck. "Oooh! Yes! Medicine and honey! Yes! I got both, because the doctor-person said I'd need that because that's how I'm meant to give you the medicine and I also got you the towels you wanted and I got half a chicken but I ate that." The blue-haired girl shuffled her feet on the floor. "Only I wasn't meant to mention that bit to you but I did."

Tabitha lifted her head from the bed slightly, squinting without her glasses, which were on the table beside her. "Chicken?" she asked in High Gallian, voice not so much soft as croaky. "How did you get the money?"

The older-looking blue-haired girl shuffled her feet on the ground. "I found it," she muttered. "It was just lying about so I picked it up and no-one saw me do it."

"Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Really really?" Tabitha began to cough.

"... no," Irukuwa admitted, wringing her hands together, but looking up with a set face. "But but but! I made sure to only make the shiny money go from the pockets of the people with lots of shiny money and expensive clothes into my pockets! I wouldn't take it from the people who didn't have any!"

"Good," Tabitha said, weakly.

"They don't have any! So I can't take any. And also it would be mean because you don't eat all the animals in the herd or any ones with young, and you only take things that they can spare. And poor people can't spare it, while people with lots of money can!"

Any response that the master might have given to the familiar was lost as she slumped back down, and Irukuwa sprung over to her in response. "You've drunk all the water in the cup!" she exclaimed. "Why didn't you make more!"

"Too tired." Anyone looking at Tabitha could have told that she was telling the truth. "Couldn't focus."

"I still don't see why you wouldn't let me get you a healer!" Pouting, the older girl crossed her arms and glared with eyes which had bled to reptilian green.

"... know why. Be fine. With medicine and rest and..." any other words were lost in the coughing.

With the exaggerated motions of a child mimicking a mother fussing, Irukuwa took the earthenware cup, and the jug beside it, and bustled off to find where to refill it. Back in the room, Tabitha shivered and sweated, a whispered litany of self-condemnation blaming herself for not putting time into learning enough healing magic.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Guard, and... bend those knees more! More! Does it hurt? Good! It shouldn't be bleedin' comfortable!"

The voice of the corporal echoed over the wall that surrounded the courtyard, her harsh Low Tristainian only one more noise in La Rochelle, which was filled with the reflected sound of thousands in the high canyons. On the other side, one hand resting against the cool stone, Louise waited, peaking through the archway at the practicing women. Deliberately, she sank lower, copying the way they stood. The Staff of Destruction _did_ feel better balanced like this in her hands. Or would it feel better if she swapped around her hands?

"_Fair lady,_" Marisalon said, a slight drawl entering her voice, "_why not go in and ask?_"

"Because I don't want them to laugh at me because I have the basics wrong," Louise muttered back. "They're commoners. You said I pick fighting up easily? Well, I can just copy the basics, and that'll be easy, right?"

"_My princess. Not out loud._"

Ignoring that remark, Louise straightened up, keeping an eye on the musketeers. The sky was starting to take on the colour of early evening overhead, and there was just an edge of chill to her still-wet hair that meant that she would rather not stand still too long, but she endured. Waiting for a moment when none of them were looking at her, she slipped through the door, and into one of the alcoves where the hotel had moved the tables which normally sat in the middle of the garden-courtyard. Propping herself on the table, she perched there, watching.

"Bend them! 'Svoid, with legs like that, you'll be gutted by the first person who realises that you're as stiff as a damn tree! Right, a bit better. Now, Marguerite," there was a thwack, Louise staring as the older woman bought her blunt bayonet up and around the guard of the brunette, to smack into her shoulder, "you damn well should be blocking properly! That hurting? Good, 'cause I just cut off your bleedin' arm! I don't care one bit if you're hurtin' after a long day's ride, 'cause now you're bleedin' dead!"

Louise swallowed. That had looked somewhat painful, and they had the advantage of wearing those padded things. She was just in a light dress. Maybe this wasn't so... no, she had said she was going to do it, so she would. There was a clatter, as the delicate iron laceries of the table overbalanced, sending the chairs stacked on top clattering onto the ground.

The girl groaned to herself. Not out of pain, as she hadn't been hurt, but out of frustration. Since... whatever had happened to her had happened, she seemed to be able to just _be _better at a lot of things. Staying hidden and unnoticed didn't seem to be one of them. And she hadn't exactly been good at that to start with, which had been a problem when she just wanted to get away from people, at school and at home. Now all four of the musketeers were staring at her, practice weapons raised in what seemed to be an instinctively hostile pose. Nevertheless, she rhetorically advanced.

"Hello," she began, straightening up to her maximum height – still shorter than the other women, and completely ignoring the fallen chairs. "I saw you practicing while I was brushing my hair. I wish to learn; show me."

Something in her head, which didn't seem to be Marisalon or the _other _memories just told her that this line of approach seemed to be the right approach to take with these commoners, and her words seemed to hit them almost by surprise, as if they had been expecting something else. After a moment, the corporal nodded. "Right you are, milady," she said, in heavily accented High Tristainian, and there was a certain air in her voice which, to Louise, sounded like more respect than she ever gave Viscount Wardes, which was, of course, ridiculous.

"I can speak Low," Louise replied. Her own accent wasn't perfect, but anything was better than listening to this woman mutilating her native tongue.

"Right," the black-haired woman said, sounding more comfortable. "Jeanne," she said to the youngest of the musketeers, who looked barely older than Louise herself, "so help me, but you seem to be doin' best after the ride, so you're going to get the basics into her ladyship. Guard and all."

"Yes, corporal," was the response. "Catch!"

Louise snatched the other woman's tossed practice weapon out of the air, without even looking, and took smug satisfaction in the look of mild consternation which appeared in the other woman's eyes as she gave it an experimental twirl. "Lighter than my staff," she remarked, leaning on it, glaring at the other girl. A glint of green light flickered in her eyes, and she noted that the other woman was a normal human, not like... whatever that bodyguard of the princess had been. "A lot shorter, too."

"Yeah, well that thing is massive," the blonde muttered. "Put it down somewhere, 'cause you'll need both hands. Milady."

A malicious thought suggested that she toss the Staff at the other girl, Jeanne, as payback for her little stunt, but Louise suppressed it. She didn't want to break bones, and throwing her glaive-staff at someone was not something to do lightly. Instead, she gave her sweetest, most innocent looking smile, and rested the polearm against one of the walls of the courtyard, letting its own weight sink the lethally-sharp jagged crystal into the stone of the wall like a knife into chilled butter. With both hands free, she took up one of her practiced postures for the Staff, and caught the other girl's eye.

The look of mild horror at the effects on the stone was rather pleasing, as was her surprise at how Louise was holding it.

"_You are having fun, my lady_."

Louise really was, actually. Around the school, she was still the Zero. Here, she could throw her weight around a little, show off. And this practice bayoneted musket felt... _right _in her hands. She could use the Staff, she could use this. They were all the same. The other girl shifted her grip a little, and went to fetch another weapon, and soon the courtyard was resounding again to the sound of wood on wood, as the musketeer, Jeanne, showed Louise the basic blocks. Inside her head, the pink-haired girl was also linking them to the use of her glaive-staff, and by her reckoning, they would work. And the musketeers – the corporal, Dominque, who swore like a sailor, and who wasn't light-handed in practice, the young blonde Jeanne, the brown-haired Marguerite, who was, Jeanne whispered to her, a fine sharpshooter, but bore a large bruise on her left cheek to show the weakness of her blocks, and Anne-Sophie – didn't seem to mind her presence here, or object to her, or treat her as... her train of thought was interrupted, as she acted, a circular parry around her opponent's weapon enough to bring it to their heart, and she grinned.

A loud clearing of a throat interrupted the practice, the sound carrying over the noise of the early-evening city. "My little Louise," Viscount Wardes said, "whatsoever are you doing here? Surely it is a little chilly out here, and I would be most pleased if you would grace me with your presence, rather than wasting it out here."

"She asked to join us," Jeanne retorted instantly, her temperature flaring up. Wardes face suddenly shifted, and the blonde blinked. "That is the truth, my lord," she said, inclining her head.

The man twitched the corners of his mouth up, but no smile reached his eyes. "Lady de la Vallière is a noble and magician," Wardes said, coldly. "The... _bayonet_ is a weapon of commoners and Germanians, a pathetic imitation of a proper spear for people who must use an arquebus or musket because they cannot cast magic. If you _must_," and that word was dripping with sarcasm, "do that, at least instruct her in the use of a proper weapon."

"I..." Louise began, eyes narrowing.

"Or, rather, I shall do so," Wardes concluded, turning to face the girl before smiling. "My dearest Louise, if you would be as kind as to grace me with your presence, I would be more than happy to show you the basics of the use of the wand-sword." He inclined his head, and offered his hand to Louise.

After a moment's hesitation, and a glance at the musketeers' faces, she took it. But she couldn't help but feel a little bit like a traitor – though a traitor to what was unclear – at the slightly betrayed look in Anne-Sophie's eyes as she collected the Staff of Destruction and walked off with her fiancé.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The evening air was already beginning to smell more strongly of wood smoke and tar from the torches, as Alean de Militare made her way through the city, a cluster of papers in the wooden box clutched to her chest. Her cloak, cut such that it bought to mind a mage's mantle without actually being one, was wrapped around her in the chill; her dark hair was tied back into a single braid anchored by the de Militare insignia. Despite the protection of her house that that afforded, though, she slowed down as she saw the narrow street ahead, broken chairs stacked outside the inn, and drunken men sprawled in the street outside. Some were dressed more regularly, in black uniforms that were probably once neat, but most were wearing a mishmash of clothing. One black-uniformed, masked man was going around, talking to them; to her practiced eye, it looked if he was hiring.

The woman sniffed contemptuously. Mercenaries. Far too many of them had congregated here, taking windships from Albion, for the remnants of the Royalist forces were too beaten to pay their wages and the Republicans had a nasty reputation for using mercenaries as disposable forces, maintaining their own loyal forces instead of hiring. Some still took their offers, but the civil war had drawn mercenaries from all over the nations, and now there was a glut of them in Albion. Those who could afford it had ended up in La Rochelle, and her house was making a tidy profit gouging them –especially with the ensnaring service contracts that the de Militares were infamous for – but she personally had nothing but contempt for them, and would rather they were out of her way. She may have had a single bodyguard with her, but there were mages among their number, and when sufficiently drunk, too many of them would not think properly of the consequences of attacking a member of an inexprimé house.

And she was in a particularly bad mood with them and their Founder-damned sloppiness, because one of the larger ones, battalion strength, had just at the last moment pulled out of a contract with her house, and she, as one who had only married into the _inexprimé _house – and was known to come from commoner stock – had spent most of today trying to clear up the mess. Someone had hired them, but her contacts in the other local houses didn't think it was any of them, which suggested that it was either some old-blooded noble, or that they'd got a contract with a foreign nation. There were more Gallians around than normal, it was true, and they had been hiring a lot... Alean wondered if they'd taken losses in Iberia.

Her boots squelched in the mud on the streets as she turned heel, deciding to go down another route. The documents she had here were of critical importance to her family, and she had been contacted specially to obtain them, the voices whispering to her on the wind as she worked on the payday logs. To lose them because of ill-judged risks would be foolish, and she had been trained better than that.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Wardes swiftly acquired one of the practice rooms inside the hotel, intended for sparring mages. Stripped down to his breeches and shirt, he cut a dashing figure, the well-tailored enchanted fabric remaining as smooth as it was when it was freshly ironed as he moved.

"We are mage-knights," he explained to Louise, his broad shoulders flexing as he stretched. "We learn to bypass the need to chant. To a well-trained knight, every motion, every shift is a ritual; life is a dance, and our motions are our words. Observe. I step back," he demonstrated, actions mimicking words, "and I draw my left hand in. A slight spin on the toe, before a stop, and a gesture akin to a circular parry... which functions as such, against an opponent, and now the lunge, bending my front knee, throwing my rear arm back, straightening my front arm at the same time." Recovering back into his guard, he flicked a stray lock of hair with his free hand. "That, my little Louise, was one of the variants of the Air Hammer spell; had I carried it out properly, a force of wind would have passed from my wand, to hit the area where I had lunged. When used on a foe, stabbing them as part of the lunge, the results are almost always fatal, as might be expected from a Line-level spell." The man chuckled. "I am sad to say that the guts of Germanian border raiders do not react well to force meant to knock a man flying."

"_Mmm, a most attractive figure of a... sorry, sorry._"

Louise nodded, biting on her lip slightly. "How long have you practiced to learn how to cast spells like that?" she asked. "No one at school can do that."

"Well, I went to the Academy Militant, rather than the Academy of Magic. The curriculum is different, and puts different weight on things. I do believe, though," Wardes added, "that the fact that I started learning with a wand-sword, from my father, made a large difference." He gestured at Louise to put down the Staff of Destruction and come closer. "Now, for you, this blade is probably a little longer than it should be," he said, passing a practice sword to her, "but tell me if it's too heavy."

Louise nodded, the wooden sword in her hand. She had never really used one before – sometimes she felt that perhaps her father was a little disappointed that he had only had daughters – but it sat well in her hand, and the wood felt almost as light as the Staff of Destruction did. Experimentally, she gave the blade a flick in the air, like she had seen people at the duellists' society at school do, and was rewarded with quite a pleasing swishing noise.

"I th-think it's fine," she managed, blushing at the feeling of his warmth so close to him. A panicking voice in her head screamed at her that she should go fetch the musketeers, and that they were meant to be chaperoning her, but that didn't seem that important right not. She brushed the necklace... the lavallier she was wearing. Yes, she could trust him to be a gentleman.

"Good," he said, stepping behind her, wrapping his arms around her to lay his hands on her forearms. Face scarlet, Louise concentrated on looking straight ahead. "Now... raise the arm... and sink down. You were doing that with the musketeers... even commoners have to do it when fighting. Does it hurt?"

"N-no. It feels fine," Louise said, honestly. He sounded almost like a kinder, less-shouty version of the musketeer corporal, saying that.

"Hmm." Something in his tone made her think that he didn't believe her. "Well, in that case, just hold that position. Now, this is a modern design of wand-sword, and so incorporates the solid guard that has come into being, with the wider use of rapiers and smallswords. The Dragon Knights still use the older basket-hilt; myself, I believe that they are fools, because that leaves their hands open to lunges and prevents them from using some of the more elegant defences, as well as the whole Poincaré school of riposte-casting."

Louise made a noise of agreement, despite her lack of understanding. "What about your magical sword?" she asked him curiously.

"I left that in my room," he said, brusquely. "It is a militant weapon, and I'm not sure if it even understands training; it seeks true combat. Useful, yes, but you must be wary of it. And it has an annoying voice."

"Oh, I know about annoying things," Louise volunteered, mentally glaring at Marisalon, who, surprisingly, did not rise to the bait.

"No doubt. Now, notice how a wand-sword of this design only has a point; it has no sharpened edge. This is the civilised manner; a true knight kills with the tip, not the edge like some barbaric Germanian falxman. Hence, the guard positions are these," he, still holding her left arm up, began to move her right arm for her, "Prime, Seconde, Tierce, Quarte, Quinte, Sixte, Septime, Octave, and Neuvieme. Think of them as a clock, my Louise, each position matching one guard."

With his front pressed against her back, Louise tried to stay calm, and think only of the things that he was showing her. She tried so very hard to not think about the heat against her back, the warm presence of his thighs against her rear, and his smell, wrapping around her, a scent of leather and a hint of sweat and something that she could only describe as 'male'. She just had to think about the positions of her hands, his fingers interlocking her right hand as he shifted her guard positions up and down, the constant feeling of his hand around her left wrist. She shouldn't think about the way that, the longer this went on, the magical lights brightening to account for the darkness falling outside, her mind began to drift towards _other _thoughts about him.

"_Is it really so bad to think such things?_" Marisalon asked, timidly. "_He is your fiancé. By my reckoning, that makes it a little bit more okay than if he was just some stranger, yes?_"

'I need to focus,' Louise thought, her heart not truly in it, as the man stepped away from her.

"And now," Wardes said, stretching slightly, bouncing up and down on his toes, "my dearest Louise, I do believe we are ready for a little 'freeplay', so to speak. That's a little like a real fight, only with blunted blades, and no offensive magic allowed. One is permitted to shield oneself, but nothing more, because," and he smiled, "people tend to get hurt if fireballs are thrown about. And then, after that, I do believe it will be time for dinner. I have worked up quite an appetite, and I am sure you have, too."

Bending her knees, angling her body as Wardes had shown her, she dropped into a guard position. And then paused, as she shifted her feet, her muscles telling her that she should try to keep her heels in a line, and keep low, the best to make up for how much shorter her legs were than his. She wasn't going to win, of course, because her fiancé, as everyone knew, was the bravest and best man in the country – and that wording deliberately excluded Mother – but the girl felt that she would like to see if she could get one good hit in on him. Enough to impress him, at least.

"En garde," Wardes said, clearly, dropping into a casual position which did not much resemble the careful formality he had been showing her. "And... fence."

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Well, that was a better day than yesterday, if I may say so myself," Louise said brightly, sitting on the bed in her nightclothes, as Anne-Sophie, sitting behind her, helped brush her hair. "And I do appreciate your willingness to show me those things," she added, graciously. "It's just..."

"... of course, he's a noble, and your fiancé," the older woman said, in a voice which had some slight note of sullenness in it. "You were right to go."

"And I managed to disarm him," Louise added, smugly, as she gazed out into the night outside, lit by the lanterns of the street. It was peculiar, she thought idly, how the canyons meant that even from this height she could see nothing more than the building opposite, an ornate façade with statues on top. It was the offices of one of the inexprimé houses, as she recalled; a sign of their undeserved wealth and influence, in her opinion, that they could afford such a nice place. "I'm almost certain that he didn't let me do that, because..." she blushed, slightly, "well, I gave him a rather nasty rap on the knuckles, but, my! Didn't his blade go flying! I don't think he expected for me to be able to move that fast."

She could hear the other woman's smile from behind him. "I do so hope you didn't hurt him _too _badly," Anne-Sophie said. "He'd probably be in a terrible mood if you broke his fingers."

Louise's blush darkened. "He did say he was looking for one of the other knights, and I think I recall him mentioning, yesterday, that that one was a Water mage," she confessed. "I think I need to apologise to him, especially after he volunteered to show me that and bought me a gift. I mean, it was exhilarating, but I do feel rather bad for actually hurting him." She leant back, letting the other girl run the brush through her hair. This wasn't too bad, really. She'd made sure that the princess' letter was tucked into her riding coat, on an inside pocket, and this mission seemed to be going well.

"Oh." There was a silence, as the two girls sat in peace, as Anne-Sophie finished. "You have lovely hair," she said, putting down the hairbrush. "I'm jealous. I've got little more than a hint of pink... well, my mother was blond, and sadly I take after her in that."

"I see." Louise paused, trying to change the subject. "So, what do you think we'll be seeing in Albion?"

"Well, I think everything but the north-east, and some of the centre of the country is in Republican hands, now. But I think the Royalists still controls the area around Newcastle... still, the Republicans apparently have most of the orcish tribes on their sides, and that means that those..." the other woman paused, for a second, clearly reaching for a profanity.

"Savages?"

"... savages, yes, are rampaging down from the highlands, looting and burning and... ravishing. I mean, I've seen orcs back home, because the Royal Musketeers do some of the things that the knightly orders do."

"Really?" Louise asked, somewhat surprised, leaning back.

"Oh, yes. We have harquebusier squadrons, riding mares and ponies, and we cycle in and out of active duty. My mare is this _adorable _tan-coloured mount, with this little white star on her brow, and she's the smartest, most loyal horse I've ever known. I've trained her to count, using her hooves," Anne-Sophie said, with a giggle. "We're not like knights, but we're not riding warhorses, so we're fast and light and have good stamina, so when some _noble _ba... some noble, begging my lady's pardon," she corrected herself, "isn't doing their duty to protect their lands, sometimes we're the first there. Where was I going with this?"

"_Orcs?_" Marisalon asked. "_What are they?_"

"Albion. And orcs."

"Oh yes, yes. Well, the ones I saw were massive... they had to be two metres, at least, and there were about ten of them. Ugly, pale-skinned... like a corpse, almost... brutes, covered in filth, and they were using stuff they'd stolen from farmers. Some of them took fire from three of us to take down, and even then they weren't properly dead yet. If the Republicans have those monsters on their sides, I really hope we don't come against too many... mind you, we have the Griffin Knights with us," she added, perking up. "I mean, when there's a squadron of you, firing and retreating on horseback, that's completely different to having the Griffin Knights." She paused, squaring up Louise. "I mean, and I apologise in advance for this, my lady, but I don't like Viscount Wardes much as a man. But I've heard tales of what he's done. There's no one alive in Tristain... nay, Halkeginia I'd rather have around, if even half the tales are true. Well, apart from Karin of the Heavy Wind, but that goes without saying. I grew up to tales of the things that she did, and," her eyes turned dreamy, "well, when you're struggling to... when you're little, she's who you always want to be."

Louise said nothing.

"And when you've got a hint of pink in your hair, it's enough to dream that you're a distant relative and you too can be just as good as she is."

The silence continued.

"Of course, nothing came of that," Anne-Sophie said, more darkly, "but... still, I'm sure we'll have no problems with Viscount Wardes around."

* * *

{0}

* * *

There were smuggler's routes into La Rochelle. A town such as that, built into the cliff walls, was going to develop new ways into it if only to avoid the bribes that the soldiers stationed by the gates might ask for. It was a fact universally acknowledged that as soon as you get two merchants together, either one starts thinking of how to get an edge on the other one, or they both set up a cartel and either way, they will try their darn best to avoid paying taxes. This was just another manifestation of this human proclivity.

Of course, once such a route was made, it could be used for more than petty corruption.

And in the case of the figures in the abandoned house high in the cliff side, they were certainly not here for tax dodging.

* * *

{0}

* * *

A mental sigh. "_My fairest, most radiant lady, whatsoever is the matter?_"

'Who says anything is the matter?'

"_You were most talkative to the commoner-musketeer before this came up, and..._" there was a cough. "_I am in your mind, you know. You find the subject of your mother to be most upsetting, at least with the way that the commoner idolises her._"

'I'm not upset!' Louise thought back, who was upset. 'Why would I be upset! There's no reason to be upset! I... shut up, you insolent head-familiar!'

There was a sympathetic noise from the neomah, and Louise curled up on top of the bed's covers. Anne-Sophie had recovered a book from her bags, and was reading it. From its leather bindings, it looked respectable, and rather like some of the academic books at school, rather than the cheap paperbacks from the presses of Amstreldamme, popular among the educated urban classes. Louise could not help but feel somewhat approving of that. She was annoyed that she had forgotten to pack any of her own books.

"_Of course,_" Marisalon added, softly, "_fairest lady, would your mother not approve if you were to become a power in the land? Wealthy and influential?_"

'She would. But what's "of course" about that?'

"_Oh, nothing, nothing. But perhaps a song would cheer you up, my lady, and I would be most willing to help you rouse yourself from this misery... which you are of course not in, because you are not miserable._" Louise harrumphed, but did not object, and the neomah began to sing softly, an odd, lilting tune in an alien language which seemed strangely familiar to Louise. The song did not conform to the classical styles of music, but instead echoed with odd harmonics in its minor key.

'What's that?' Louise mentally asked after a few minutes of that. 'It's... not unpleasant.'

"_Oh, just one of the songs of the neomah. My mother taught it to me, when she had just made me. It is a song of welcoming, to be sung from the top of your tower in the City, to call others to you._"

'What do the words mean?'

There was a cough. "_I had forgotten your ignorance of the Language,_" Marisalon said, clinically. There was a slight pause. "_It is spoken by all in the City. If you would like, my fairest princess of the green sun, I would be most honoured... and indeed, pleased if you would wish for me to teach it to you. I am most capable of doing so, and it is a way to while away idle hours, is it not?_"

Louise sat upright, with a faint glow of pleasure on her face. 'That would be lovely,' she almost said out loud.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The air in the hotel's bar was hazy with smoke, the wisps that escaped from the fireplace whirling and twirling around the figures seated at the tables, made visible by the magelights and the lanterns. This may have been a higher-class establishment than most, but there was still an ever-present scent of stale beer and wine below everything, which mixed with the wood-smoke to produce the characteristic scent of a drinking establishment. The occupants here were a mix of nobles, merchants, and a fair few of the better class of mercenaries, mostly comprised of the officer corps of formerly Albionese Royalists, who had gone into business for themselves and still maintained their own chains of command. The black-uniformed group, in broad-brimmed hats, appeared to be rather popular with the serving staff, for they were tipping well. The Griffin Knights had occupied two tables against the far wall, and judging by the number of earthenware cups in front of some of them, they had been here for quite some time.

"... and... and so I said to her," one younger knight began, swaying slightly. The falcon sitting on his shoulder cawed, and he straightened up, shaking his head. "Than's, Argent." Squinting, the man peered down into his cup. "It seems to have got all empty. Maybe another?"

"Jacques, you are drunk," Alan de Trebourne said. Only a single cup of watered-down wine was before him, and he had been nursing it for most of the evening. Exhaling, he ran a hand through his red hair. "What shall we do with you? I'm half-inclined to send you to your room. Alone. Without any of the barmaids," he added, a little bitterly, for one of the barmaids, in a low-cut dress and with skin that hinted at Germanian ancestry, had been making eyes at the sodden Jacques.

"I say! That's a little cruel," one of the other knights remarked, tilting his cup slightly in salute. A second glance at the table would reveal that the distribution of cups was rather unequal; some of the men had, much like de Tebourne, been nursing diluted wine, even as others, like this one, had been drinking more heavily. "Thanks awfully for handling things, Alan... gives us a chance to get a few drinks here, before a week of Albionese swill. Can't even grow a proper grape on that soaked island." He paused, and peered owlishly. "But it's still cruel to not let a man have his barmaid or two."

"Cruel, yet perhaps fitting," a voice remarked from behind them. There was a wintery note in it as he added, "I note that _some _of you have indulged."

"Are you well, Jean-Jacques?" de Trebourne asked, lowering his voice, and half-rising.

"Well enough," Wardes said, heading away from the knight's table, towards the fire.

The redhead smiled. "And was it fractured? I promise you that there isn't a pool running."

Wardes' face soured. "A slight fracture," he confessed, as a clatter at the door announced the entrance of more men, more mercenaries in sombre black and broad-brimmed hats in the Germanian style, shadowing their faces, who joined their friends.

"If that had been a real blade, you'd have lost the thumb."

"I am aware of that." The viscount's lips were narrowed. "You know how they say that the best swordsman in the world does not fear the second-best, but the worst?"

"Are you looking to recruit her, as a specialised killer against the best swordsmen in the world? We wouldn't need a very large griffin for her."

"You are taking too much humour of this, Alan. And do not speak that way of my fiancé."

"I eternally beg your forgiveness, my friend." The man shot a glance back at the table, the black cat sitting on a pouch on his back mewling at the motion. "And many of our knights are now drunk," he said, dropping his voice even lower, so it was little more than a murmur, Viscount Wardes reading his lips rather than hearing him over the noise of the bar.

"I noticed. Are the people who are on watch duties sober?" Wardes asked, just as softly.

"Yes, of course. You are our commander, Jean-Jacques; we are loyal to you," Alan de Trebourne said. "And with that said, I will remind the people who drew duties."

"Good job. Are you aware of where the musketeers are?"

"As far as I know, they are upstairs. One of them, the black-haired one, fetched two jugs, one of wine, one of water, and some cups three quarters of an hour ago, so I believe they may be drinking in their quarters." He paused, looking towards the exit. "Will you be joining staying in here for the rest of the night? Until midnight, at least, so I can find you?"

Wardes made a noise of acknowledgement, and stepped up to the bar himself.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Clouds of hay were kicked up as several figures dropped down into the stables. They blurred against the background of the world, their colour shifting as they moved, so that the eye seemed to glance over them. The predatory animals were stabled in a separate building from the more conventional mounts, which made things easier. Compared to the warm, slightly flatulent smell of the other half, these stables were sharp with the smell of old blood, the gutters stained by years of meat-eating beasts being fed.

The griffins were in wider stalls, enough that they had space to stretch their wings. With eagle-like cries, they begged for food from the newcomers, whose footsteps they had heard. Only one cowered backwards, beak clacking on thin air at the presence of humans that did not smell, and that it could not see properly.

And then the stalking strangers just waited. Waited in the stables, by the entrance to the hotel grounds, mere patterns of distortion against the dark background, in the alcoves near the entrance. All bar one, who went from water trough to water trough, adding just a little touch of something to the drinking-water of the beasts. Then they, too, went to their sentinel position.

When setting a mousetrap, poisoning the cheese is the thorough approach.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Sitting on the side of the bed, Irukuwa swung her legs idly, staring intently at a moth flapping around the lantern outside their window. Pouting, she looked down at Tabitha's sleeping form, and checked the wet towel on her forehead. It was still suitably wet. Tongue sticking out in concentration, the blue-haired girl leant forwards, squinting at the hourglass. The sand had almost run out. And that meant that she got to turn it over again! It was so fun! Oh, and she had to give Big Sister more of the medicine that the plant-smelling healing woman had given her.

It was at that point that Irukuwa made a terrifying, horrifying, utterly nasty discovery.

They had run out of honey.

And the instructions on the medicine the plant-smelling woman had got, which she had got Big Sister to read to her, had been very, very clear. Take one spoonful with honey every turn of the sand spinny thing. What happened if the honey wasn't there? Was it as bad as taking honey without medicine? Irukuwa didn't know. Humans were _so _confusing, and odd, and so amusingly useless without the Rhyme. And the fact that most of them didn't even have magic, and the ones who did have magic didn't have proper magic... honey! Yes! The distraction-thoughts needed to stop, because Big Sister was ill!

So, clearly, the best possible thing to do now was to buy more honey! Or, even better, take it, because clearly it was an emergency and she had to get Big Sister her honey, or else very bad things would probably happen, and... it was _hard _pretending to be human, while taking was easy!

* * *

{0}

* * *

The evening was progressing, and the hour was growing later. The bar of the hotel had begun to empty, as guests went up to their rooms, and drinkers drifted out into the night. Close to the fire, two female mages, who looked barely out of school, were giggling as one of the Griffin Knights talked to them. The table where the knights had been sitting was considerably emptier of men, and more laden with drinks; several had already made their excuses for the evening, and departed off to their rooms, while others were on watch elsewhere in the building. Viscount Wardes still remained, although his grey eyes were stormy, and his half-empty cup of cider stood in contrast to the array of discarded mugs on the knights' table. Breathing out, the wood-smoke in the room curled in the light, and the wind mage shook his head.

"I feel it is getting a little... dense in here, de Tréville," he said, tapping the other sober man at the table on the shoulder, and gesturing for him to rise. "Is the wine here not good? I see the others have partaken of it heavily."

The other, almost-blocky man picked up his hat from the back of his chair, and joined the viscount. "I had one glass, but..." he looked around, "there are too many mercenaries in here for me to feel safe. Too many Albionese voices. I can just see some of them being retainers of those damn Republicans. And..." he spread his hands, "... someone will need to help those men up to their rooms, and wring them out."

"Should I provide you with towels to mop them up?"

"Indeed." The green-haired man adjusted his ponytail idly, fidgeting with it. "I know we are headed to Germania for that damnable incident with the ambassador," he said, referring to the cover story, "but I would not put it beyond those treacherous Albionese to interfere... and one can never trust a mercenary at the best of times."

Wardes nodded, squaring his jaw. "That makes sense, Matthew. Of course, de Trebourne is seeing the watches and our guard. I trust him."

"Alan's a good man, but I cannot help but feel somewhat disquieted," de Tréville said. "'Twould have been better if we had not run into that damnable earth dragon, but it is our duty to defend Tristain above all others, and we had no choice but to investigate such a place."

Wardes made a noise of agreement. "True. And..." he threw himself to the ground as, with a clatter of chairs, the black-uniformed mercenaries with the broad-brimmed hats rose to their feet, hands emerging from cloaks with pistols. The roar of massed pistol fire filled the room, the choking white smoke of blackpowder joining the haze from the fire, casting the lights in shrouded halos.

Suddenly, the fog of war within the bar was illuminated by reddish-orange, as the open fire became a jet of flame, snaking out with malevolent intent in branched tendrils. Screams and cries filled the room as black-coated mercenaries ignited, burning with a heat which did not come from the fire alone. The tendrils of fire were taking on a humanoid form now, throwing themselves at the mercenaries with no care for the shots or blades that passed through them with no effect, and men burned. The scent of burning pork joined the blackpowder and woodsmoke, and with a shattering explosion the bottle of spirits on one table exploded, showing the vicinity in glass coated in burning spirits.

"That is _nice_," the sword on the viscount's back stated in admiration. "Let's go stab them, show them what proper violence can do!"

"Shut up, sword," the man muttered.

"Louis," de Tréville breathed, besides Wardes having seen the motion out of the corner of his eye, and reacted instinctively. "He was with those women, and..." he paused, as the clouds of smoke were knocked away by an invisible pulse. "God and Founder, I heard those shots zip over my head!"

The new clarity revealed an overturned table by the fire, the one remaining knight knelt behind it, along with a woman with a wand out, whose second wind-spell sent one of the mercenaries flying back into a wine rack. The broken bottles spilt red out on the floor, which matched the macabre decoration which the shot-riddled Griffin Knights against the far wall were providing to the room. The familiars which had survived the barrage were going insane, throwing themselves at the mercenaries who were largely ignoring them, compared to the threat of the burning golems. Fire licked at the area, the decorations on the ceiling already aflame, and the screams of the other people in the room failed to drown out the roar of the fire and the crackle of pistol fire – which began afresh as some of the other mercenaries in the room drew, and opened up on the black-uniformed ones.

"Who are they?" Wardes muttered, holding himself low, wand-sword drawn.

"People to stab!" said the sword.

"For Tristain!" de Tréville roared beside him, the stone floor rising up to wrap him an armour which made him look almost golem-like, everything apart from his eyes and mouth concealed. A fireball lashed out of the group of mercenaries, and splashed against his armour. The man grunted in pain, at the sudden wave of heat, but with a step-back and a punch, shards of stone sprayed inwards from the walls, scything through the men armoured in little more than hardened leather. "Traitorous swine! Wardes, sire! I'll dispose of the ones in here, and avenge them!" Rigid, solid arm movements, his stone armour groaning as the magic forced it to move with him, bought a barricade up, and he dropped down behind it, only pausing to bring a second one up from the floor before the overturned table by the fire. "This has the speaking of an ambush at more than one level! Check the roof! 'Svoid, where are the others?"

* * *

{0}

* * *

The pink haired girl, pretending to stare out the window as she attended to the language lesson in her head, had just about got the hang of the numbers, when the noise started. "What was that?" Louise asked, cocking her head at the sounds, before the musketeer pulled her off the bed, down onto the soft rugs.

"Magic," Anne-Sophie hissed, "... and powerful." She flinched down, as somewhere below them, there was series of sharp cracks. "Get dressed," she ordered.

"Are you..." and that was as far as Louise got, before a second boom made the floor pulse under her. She swallowed, hard, and glanced around wildly, before her eyes fixed on her riding coat and boots.

"_Don't bother with the complicated dresses,_" Marisalon said, clearly, "_but try to get those riding breaches on, too. You won't be able to run properly in these bedroom clothes._"

Biting her lip to prevent accidental profanity, Louise scurried over to the discarded clothing, thankful that she had only stuffed them into a saddle bag when changing into her lighter dress and started to pull it on. The reassuring weight of the princess' letter was still there, on the inside pocket of her riding coat, and she began to do up the buttons. Meanwhile, behind her, the pink-blonde musketeer was rummaging through the trunk she had, yanking out similarly practical clothing. A dark blue coat, with odd fired-clay pouches on the front, was thrown on. "Keep hold of that spear thing!" the other woman ordered, as she put a primed pistol down beside her, and, lying flat on her back, began to shuffle on a mid-length skirt. "We're just going to wait here for now, until the others get here, and..." there was a whoomph from down below, as something ignited.

One boot done up, Louise nodded. Grabbing the Staff of Destruction, she began to tear off the cloth ties, revealing the strange metal and crystal of the magical artefact, before a frantic banging at the door interrupted her.

Skirt half-done up, Anne-Sophie rolled onto her front, and pointed the pistol at the door. "Password!" she snapped.

"Saint Jerome's Mercy," came the voice of the corporal. "Bleedin' hell, what's going on?"

"No clue, corporal," was the response, as, still barefooted, the musketeer let the other three women in, pistol still raised. "But it doesn't sound good."

"You can say that again," the older woman said. "Foundersfire, that's one hell of pike," she added, with staring at the now-unwrapped Staff of Destruction, almost two metres of oddly-reflecting metal and jagged crystal that flicked with strange un-coloured flames. Her eyes met Louise's who was crouched in a low position, guard raised. "Guess there's a reason you..." and that was the last thing she ever said, as her torso came apart.

Warm droplets splattered over Louise's face

Marisalon shrieked a wordless warning in her skull, a purely instinctual order to _get out the way_.

And after that thought passed through her mind, the blade passed cleanly through the stomach of Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière and dug into the wall behind her. Within her head, the world seemed to freeze in a terrifying tableau, the corporal's body collapsing in slow motion. The older woman had been cut in half by the blade which was now sticking through the girl's chest. A blink took subjective seconds, and she stared at the outer carapace of white and black plates, splattered with the musketeer's blood. It may have reflected light like metal, but it looked quite unlike steel or iron. There were characters engraved in seals around the edges of each plate, ones unlike the alphabet of Halkegina, which provided hints of colour to this unnatural form. No flesh was visible, for where there were not plates, there was something darker underneath, filigree decorations of metal making strange pentagonal shapes, and in this inhuman visage, the single crystal lens at the front of the otherwise blank white mask gleamed in the magical lighting. And Louise gazed down to a monstrously oversized sword embedded in her, a slab of red not-metal slick with the corporal's blood, and which drew the mind to pondering how much blood this terrible weapon had shed in its existence.

With a gasp, she stepped off the weapon in a swirl of silver sand which revealed that she was unharmed, swinging her glaive low. The armoured figure jumped over it, and the impossibly sharp edge of the Staff of Destruction cut through the wardrobe like paper. Off balance, Louise nevertheless managed to whirl with newly trained instincts to bring the long polearm back into position, and the next cut with that monstrous sword bounced off the shaft, though the girl could feel the bone-deep ache from the impact. Her attacker was massively stronger than her, she knew, and she stepped back, desperately giving ground to get away from them whoever they were and...

"_Dragonblood!_" Marisalon shrieked.

... the sky was dark over the adamant dome, no stars or moon in the sky for these five days, and the arrows and essence-cannon blasts were falling around her like rain, and she was dodging every single one, like a dancer in the rain, but the exit seemed so long ago and...

... she managed to desperately parry another of those bone-breaking attacks, retreating all the time under the relentless onslaught and the monstrous figure's blade was now _on fire_. Her back hit the wall, and she flinched, biting down on her lip. Over the shoulder of the armour, she could see more such figures, and one, armoured in blue and grey, swung a forearm into the blonde musketeer's – what was her name – throat, sending her rag-doll limp into a wall, even as Anne-Sophie fired her shot point-blank into another one and dodged backwards, falling as she tripped over a discarded bag, which meant that the lunge which would have claimed her life went high.

"_Run! We need to get out of here! Run! What... I... what are they doing here?_"

The staff-glaive held like a scaled up bayonet, Louise tried to edge around, keeping the crystal point between her and her attacker at all times. The weapon was clumsy in here because she couldn't swing the long polearm properly, but she could at least make the thing impale itself if it tried to get closer. The figure moved, to keep up with her, and...

"_Dodge!_"

... she came apart in silver sand, throwing herself forwards through the lunging man and reforming behind him, headed for the door. That motion meant that the tendril of water thrown at her by a lighter-armoured figure – that one was a mage! – missed, and she stabbed at him, letting her motion carry herself forwards with brutal force.

The Staff cut through the armour like butter, and Louise ripped the blade out with almost no resistance, green fire licking like hungry tongues from the wound which left the mage nearly cut in half. From behind the helmet, a distinctly feminine scream, began when the blade entered, was cut short, and the red blood coating the crystal blade of the Staff and running from the wound lost all colour, becoming an indescribable grey, as if centuries of decay were happening in an instant.

Louise had no time to see that, though, as rather than face the guardian by the door, she threw herself at the wall and left no sign of her passage. She darted to the right; there were more armoured figures by the door, who seemed stunned by her sudden appearance. In the odd clarity of adrenaline, she felt the nightdress under her hastily thrown-on coat rip, as legs pounding, she fled for her life, her forehead alight with brazen light. Jinking, for fear of spells being thrown at her back, she took the first left, heading for the stairs, and only the scream from Marisalon allowed her to throw herself to the side.

A pistol roared, far, far too close to her head, as a patch of wall detached. Dropping low, white smoke all around her, Louise brought her staff-glaive around in a sweeping motion, the shaft taking the blurred figure in the knees. They went down, smashing into the wall and tearing down a tapestry as they fell. Louise whirled the Staff down, with a strength born of desperation, the air around her igniting in a corona of green flames as she stabbed into her fallen foe, fiery tongues licking from the cut which went from throat to sternum. Then she was back on guard, and running again, but the crackle behind her and a wash of heat was enough to reveal that the armoured figure with the blood-red sword was back, trailing burning footprints and now wreathed in a nimbus of red-orange fire that seemed, somehow, far more real than her own glow. Sparks flew from the wall as that terrible sword was brought around at waist height, and Louise only just managed to block it.

And then the girl screamed as she felt the heat of a bonfire, the flames around her foe licking at her flesh and her hastily thrown-on coat smouldering.

She had to run. She had to get away. That... that _thing _could burn her to death without ever laying a finger on her. At least out here, in the corridors, she could retreat, though behind the figure the wall-hangings and rugs were already burning, filling the corridor with smoke. The body of the one she had killed was grey and crumbling, the once-shifting armour now a matt white, but solid compared to the ash that was carried off it by the thermals from the fire.

A lunge from the armoured figure, and she exploded into motion, a circular parry bringing the Staff up and around the sword, and for once his monstrous strength worked against him, as the blade sunk into the wall like a knife into butter. Screaming, the viridian light around her exploding into a city of bronze and green and a four armed titan that filled the corridor, the girl cut into the ground with the unnatural sharpness of her staff-glaive and danced back, letting her foe overbalance backwards as he yanked the sword out of the wall, his own nimbus of fire now a bonfire which filled his single crystal eye, the blood of the musketeer corporal baked on top of his white armour.

Unseen by him, green cracks spread over the stone floor, from Louise's cut, cascading and letting out acrid smoke which seed up from under the rugs.

All fear had now fled from Louise's mind. She was thinking with uttermost clarity, as her riding boots clattered backwards, retreating away from the fire that burned around her foe. The figure flipped up onto its feet, in a jet of flame, and began to bear down on her. The length of the Staff was a help here; her foe could not get too close without impaling himself. And in the light of her anima, she was once more imperious, divine, the swords on her brow a direct command to any foe that they would not be permitted to strike her. Despite his inhuman armour, despite his monstrous sword, her foe flinched at the slight girl, whose eyes glowed with terrifying light and whose hair extended around her, moving with conscious intent.

And so, when the floor gave way, the stone disintegrating into fine white ash with a faintly heard scream, he was caught unaware. Louise was not, and at the edge of the new precipice, gazing down at the bonfire as it set the corridor below alight, she pointed down at the sprawled figure. Howling sands unfolding from her gesture and cruelly whipped down to hit the prostrate figure in a silver sandstorm. Two more had fallen with him, and she moved to...

"_Run, my lady! Run! You need to get away; there will be more and you cannot fight them all! And he will not be dead! Find the knights!_"

... perhaps discretion was the better part of valour, she admitted, forcing down her desire to stay.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The fire in the bar had consumed most of the area by the time that the other Griffin Knights got to it. The smoke was as dense as fog, before wind-spells blew it away, and incidentally impaled two remaining black-coated figure on spears made of air. What was revealed was a scene of carnage, even as the fire mages snuffed out the flames and water mages extinguished them. Spilt wine pooled with blood to leave a congealed mess on the floor until one could not tell the two fluids apart. Mangled and burnt bodies, some in the black uniforms of the hostiles, some in fripperies, some in other uniforms and some in the clothes of the serving staff were lying everywhere like rag-dolls. The dead knights at their table were still there, stringless puppets riddled with shot. And Matthew de Tréville was face-up, in his stone armour, which seemed unmarred.

"This makes no sense," Wardes said, softly. "Both Louis and Matthew were still fighting when I got there, and they had no mages of real incident on the hostile side. And other mercenaries had joined in on their side."

"What makes no sense, partner, is you leaving and me not getting to kill them all. This could have been a real fun fight," the sword in his hand said.

Something in Wardes snapped. "One word from you," he hissed, "and it will be the smelter for you."

"Doesn't work!" it replied, cheerfully, but it nevertheless was quiet.

"They're all dead," de Trebourne said, gazing over the area. "No body heat. Obviously there were more mercenaries in a reinforcement position," he knelt down by de Tréville's body, and inhaled sharply, coughing from the smoke in the air. "Founder." He shot a sharp glance at Wardes. "No injuries at all. Something killed him, because he's dead, but... his armour isn't broken at all."

"Powerful wind mages can kill a man by stealing his breath, but that would take a triangle-rank," Wardes noted. "Water can do it, too... there are nasty tricks which can be done with blood. Water and Earth can turn a man's bones to dust. Whatever did it, it's a sign that they have a powerful mage."

"But..."

"We should prepare to move." Closing his eyes, Wardes reached out for the senses of his familiar. And found nothing. No mind, no senses, no awareness; not even the alien dreams of his griffin. Just the horrible nothingness that told him his companion was dead.

"Philippe was meant to be readying the mounts," he said, panic coursing through his voice, suppressed by an iron will. "Alan, have you heard from him?"

"I have not. Why?"

"My familiar is dead. Which means..."

"... other things are afoot," the redhead snapped. "Wardes! Treachery!"

"Yes," he said, coldly. "But whose?" He shook his head. "Well, we can see that later. We must get Lady de la Vallière, and get to the ship. Move!" he snapped at the others. "Leave the bodies! Our mission depends on it!"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Breaths coming quickly, a green-and-brass nimbus wrapped around her form, Louise knelt, and prayed. She prayed to whosoever would hear her; God, Malfeas, the Endless Desert Marisalon had spoken of and Brimir. In a dark room, lit in green, she prayed, staff-glaive at the ready as she recovered her breath, and hid. She had darted through a wall as soon as she had been out of sight, and dropped down through a floor into a thankfully empty room, and she prayed at it had been enough. She was feeling... drained. That was the only word she could use.

She couldn't hide from them if they saw her, she knew. And that flight and fight had taken so much out of her. That's what they were planning to do. The genius of the plan was evident; it was precisely what she would have done. It was precisely what she had done. When facing world-titans, they had isolated them, picked them off with overwhelming numbers, and thrown away their own lives to exhaust their foe. That was what these... these traitors were doing to her. She wasn't sure how she had got out of the Calibration Feast, and there was a darkness in her recent memory, but... ah.

Louise whimpered, as another alien memory passed from her. They were so _strong_, so _present _that... 'Marisalon,' she thought. 'There was someone. Before me. And she was... she was killed by these... by these "dragon-blooded", wasn't she? I know there are tales that some dragons can turn into human form... but what do their descendants want? With me?' She paused. 'And there were _mages _there,' she added, outrage filling her as she got her breath back.

"_I really don't know,_" the neomah replied, with the sort of numb, breathless panic which she had only heard from her when the head-familiar had first discovered that she was in a place with two moons. "_What you call 'mages' don't exist where I come from, but the Dragonblooded rule much as your nobles do, and they are the masters of the five elements of Creation. And they kill anything that they wish. They've wiped out groups that I organised, trying to trade goods into the City. That __was after I was a familiar for one, of course._"

'Do they all have scales like that?' Louise thought, listening as hard as she could. She shut her eyes, closing off the sight of the green-lit, lavishly furnished room... better than her one... to hear that vital sound of footsteps outside over the sound of the violence below. 'I thought it was armour, but...'

"_That's armour, yes. Magical armour. I know that much; one of the children of one of my masters served on the Wyld Hunt. And..._" there was a pause, "_... that was probably what that was. Which is to say, they're specifically here to kill you. And me. Not that they know about me. But I die too._"

Louise sagged, with a half-giggle. "Well, they weren't exactly after the commoner musketeers, something tells me," she muttered to herself. 'Now, _what _are they doing here?'

"_I don't know! I don't know where I am, so I don't know where anything which could be where I am got here, either!_"

'Well, think hard about what powers you know they might have!' the girl mentally snapped. 'I'm going to stay here, until I either hear them coming, or they get driven off! Time is on _my_ side, because there's a full squad of Griffin Knights downstairs _and _Viscount Wardes!' She swallowed hard. 'And... the musketeers are all dead, aren't they?' she barely dared to think. 'They... they killed them. J-just like that.'

"_Probably. If any live, that will be because you ran... which, my lady, is to say, you led them away. And that is why it is your job to keep away from them, so the children of the Dragons search for you, and they can escape, too._"

* * *

{0}

* * *

The shop where she had bought the honey previously was closed. This was a set-back for Irukuwa, but only a small one, because the door was hardly locked at all. Stepping past the fractured hinges, green eyes reflected light in the darkness, as she scanned for where the honey would be, sniffing. The lovely-sweet smell drew her to the hatch that led down to the cellar, the aroma mixing with that of the wine which was also kept down there, and causally the blue-haired girl pried the heavy wooden cover up. She only needed that one jar, and then she could go back to Big Sister!

... well, maybe two, because she wanted something nice, and she had been doing _lots _of hard work for big sister. Or three.

Maybe four. At the outside.

A few minutes later, Irukuwa left the shop at a skip, an acquired sack full of clay jars over one shoulder. And then the scent of the lovely lovely honey was displaced by the rather nastier smell of blackpowder, and the strange smell of magic... and there was something alien about some of this magic. Unwittingly, she let out a whine, and squeezed up against a wall, away from the lanterns which illuminated this street, snuffling at the air.

Something vast momentarily flapped in the street, sending the lanterns swinging like corpses on a gallows, and when that moment had passed, the blue-haired girl was on the roofs, at a dead run.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Henri!" The voice which barked outside was very familiar, and Louise's eyes widened in relief. "Get that lock off!"

Nevertheless, she kept her guard up. And she was going to keep it up even if she actually saw that it was Viscount Wardes. Her fire had dimmed, slightly, to the level of an aura rather than the burning bonfire that it had been just before, but there was still enough light to see. And she was going to watch for anyone else trying to... she gagged at the memory of the blood splatter from the corporal, but managed to hold the blade steady. There was a pop, and the door opened, the men outside recoiling as the strange green light bled through the doorway. Louise thanked everyone that she had been praying to that she could see Viscount Wardes, but there were more important things to do first.

"Viscount!" she blurted out. "Look behind you! They might try to get behind you!"

"Louise?" Wardes managed, his long sword pointed at her, the shock wide in his grey eyes. She had seen what he could do; that was a deadly gesture. "What..."

"It's my magic," she blurted out, words tripping over each other as she tried to get out an explanation. "I found... this happens when I push myself!" Hands wrapped around her staff-glaive, her knuckles whitened as she stared up at his face, which looked strange and peculiarly unlike him in the green, shadowless light. It was the lack of contrast on his face, she thought, in a moment of bizarre realisation. "It happened the first time... for the first time against Fouquet!"

"You are... full of surprises, my little Louise," he said, slowly. "And..."

"They might get behind you! They got behind the musketeers!"

"Louise..."

"Viscount," she interrupted. "We have to go. Now. The people attacking... they're trying to kill me, personally. I... I think it must be because of my strange magic, or maybe it's because of the fact that I'm a Vallière, but they came straight for my room... I think all of the musketeers are dead! I... I know the corporal is, they killed her from behind. They're wearing this... this strange armour that covers them completely, even the eyes, and it lets them hide in plain sight! And... and I think their magic is related to the elements somehow, but they're not all mages! One of them was on fire! I barely got away and..." she took a deep breath, "... why aren't we going!"

"_Good girl,_" Marisalon said, gently. "_Just as practiced._"

The grey-haired man, who, now she looked closer, looked sweaty and somewhat scorched, straightened up, though he still threw suspicious glances at her. "Right!" he ordered. "We're going to punch through to Saint Oranis' Rise. This building isn't safe, and the captain should have the windstones on board right now. Once we're in the air, we're safe; we can counter any magic they use, and they can't chase us. I and my fiancé must get through at all costs, for the mission."

"Those bastards killed our griffons," his red-headed second-in-command swore. The cat by his ankles hissed, and scampered off. "I can have the lead; that way we can see ahead," he added. "Over the rooftops or out the front, Jean-Jacques?"

"Rooftops," the Captain of the Griffin Knights said, firmly. "We don't want to be caught in an ambush in these streets. And I've sent messages to some mercenaries I hired today; they should slow pursuit." He nodded once. "Louise. Are you ready," he licked his lips, "even with that... strangeness?"

"Yes," the girl said, with as much confidence as she could muster.

* * *

{0}

* * *

There! There! The funny magic smells were coming from that place, Irukuwa thought, staring down at a hotel from the rooftops. It looked like a nice place, nicer than the one she had taken Big Sister too, but it was not a business which was faring well, because she could see the smoke billowing from the lower windows. From within there were several strangely coloured glares, shining from the windows. And the air stank of blackpowder and wood smoke and many other things.

The blue-haired girl's stomach rumbled, but she ignored it. Something was out of place. Something was very wrong. The smells were wrong.

There was magic close by. Very close.

And then Irukuwa grinned, a predator's grin full of too-many, too-sharp teeth. She blinked, and her teeth became human again, but her gaze remained locked on the statue on top of the building. Idly, one hand went back into her sack of honey, and she lifted a jar out, weighting it idly. On one hand, it would be a waste of a jar of tasty, tasty honey. On the other hand, putting watching-golems on this sort of place which were probably pretending to be a statue meant that someone was up to something mean, and it _would _be funny.

Honey? Or funny?

Funny won out. Hurling it overarm, the blue-haired girl threw the jar of honey at the small of the golem's back, where it shattered. And the golem stayed there, unmoving. And... the girl sniffed... no, she was wrong. It was a statue? So where was the magic coming fr... Irukuwa ducked, and the attempted grapple went high, the blue-haired girl weaving around her blurred attacker.

Spinning on her toe, she bought her fist up into the armoured stomach of the golem-like figure, directly behind her and sent it flying back in an arc which ended when it smashed into the canyon wall, before falling limply to the ground in an almighty clatter.

Irukuwa advanced cautiously, shaking her head slightly, as if slightly groggy. Her nostrils flared; she could smell the blood... blood? Golems shouldn't be bleeding... well, apart from a few golems, but they were special golems. Ooops. That was human blood, too. She could normally tell the difference from that far. Well, they shouldn't be cheating by wearing armour like that! That was cheating armour! Not at all fair! The apparent girl licked at her bloodied knuckles, and let her eyes bleed back to human-like blue rather than reptilian green, her teeth retracting to the silly silly blunt things that humans had to rely on. She really hoped that Big Sister wouldn't be too angry at her because she was really, really, really not meant to kill people unless Big Sister told her to.

... she was meant to be getting honey to Big Sister! Stupid stupid stupid! She got distracted, and now Big Sister was going to be ill-er, and it was all her fault and... oooh! The girl's eyes flicked around, and she darted over to the fallen not-really-a-golem. It was a present to help Big Sister get better! She liked this kind of thing, didn't she? They got to do all sorts of fun things when they did things together, and she got to give presents to people and Irukuwa liked giving presents, especially ones which made people happy! And the Rhyme was telling her that she had done a very good job, and that made it even better!

Dilemma solved, she stuffed the bag into her mouth, and in a clatter of wings she swept the armoured corpse up in her claws, up into the night sky. There was a clatter of gunfire from below, from the same rooftop, and one shot glanced off her belly scales, but it did not break the flesh. And like that, uncaring of the other armoured figures on the rooftop, the dragon vanished into the night.

* * *

{0}

* * *

For Louise, the desperate, heart-pounding flight across the rooftops was a whirl of adrenaline and terror. The tree was ahead of them, filling the night's sky with its mass, yet it never seemed to get any closer. The clouds were low and heavy tonight, and only Taksony could be seen in the heavens above, casting a slightly morbid red light over the night. Two of the surviving knights were guarding her with their spells, golems shielding her with their bodies, but there was still a zip of musketfire over her head. On the roofs, though, the Griffon Knights despite their depleted numbers were in their element. Line-class spells were thrown about with abandon by the triangle-rank mages. Balls of fire and earth the size of a man's fist shot into the sky, descending with malevolent intent to explode in cutting shrapnel. Shields of ice orbited the party, water contained within which stopped shots. And Viscount Wardes had a crackling orb of lightning held his off-hand, which would lash out at anything which got too near. Had the knights been at full strength, it would have been a massacre. As it was, with only four of them, they were merely extremely dangerous.

And then they were three, as a lucky musket shot took one knight in the leg, and he tumbled, screaming.

"Keep on!" Wardes snarled, grabbing Louise's hand. "Just a bit further!"

Rather than protest, Louise focussed on keeping her leg muscles working, the burning sensation in them matching the pain in her hands. The Staff, despite how light it was, was still cumbersome, and she was so much shorter than all these long-legged men. They were heading down a long, straight road now, over rooftop bridges, and Saint Oranis' Rise was straight ahead of them and...

...the light from behind them was getting redder. The girl could see her shadow, long in front of her, and just at the edge of hearing, was the crackle of a roaring bonfire.

"'Svoid!" de Trebourne swore. "What is... it's like her!" His footsteps stopped, as he turned, his burning golems in front of him.

"Alan!" Wardes snapped.

"I'll slow it down! Keep on!" the second-in-command yelled, gasping for breath, as he readied his wand-sword. "I am loyal to _you_, sire, and I _believe!_For the cause! For Brimir and God!"

Louise could hear her fiancé swear, and his step-pattern changed. The ball of lightning in his hand flashed out, and without breaking pace, he grabbed Louise, swinging her over his shoulder.

"Don't trip me, Louise!" he ordered, in between gulped breaths.

From that position, undignified though it was, she had a very good view of the battle behind her. Alan de Trebourne, Griffin Knight, his cat-familiar beside him, flanked by five golems that seemed to be a mix of stone and fire. And charging down the street, like some alien cyclopean beast wrapped in fire, was the white-armoured figure from the room, the one which had killed the corporal. It was moving fast; far, far too fast, four or more times the speed of a normal man. It was no wonder that it had caught up with them. With a jet of flames, it kicked off from the street and ran up the wall, awnings and wall hangings igniting as it passed.

The mage knight began to chant, a long, complicated sequence, which to the ears of Louise, who was still at school, was far longer than she had ever heard. As one, the tiles on the roof he was standing on rose up orbiting him like a constellation of stone. A second chant, and each one was now wrapped in a wreath of flames. And then, slowly, he moved so he was filling the rooftops, from the edge to the canyon wall. "Face me!" the man yelled. "Stand and fight, whether you are man or monster." With each word, he flicked his wand-sword, and a tile lashed out towards the figure, detonating in a flash of light as it dodged or parried each one.

He went down, with a knife in the throat, before the flaming golem-man even got closed to him, the tiles clattering down, still burning. With a whomph, something stored in the roof of the building which was missing its tiles ignited, and even this far away, Louise could feel the hot breeze. The attacker hadn't even appeared to move.

"_There's more! Not just him. Where? Look for the shimmers!_"

Her vision blurred by tears of rage, Louise raised a hand and pointed at the...

...Fire Aspected Dragonblood wearing what looked to be like some form of retrofitted variant of 'Thunders Righteous Breath' Type-13b Gunzosha Commando Armour, intended for use by elite mortal forces but often used by Dragonblooded second-line troops for whom the dedication of the entire output of a category three or higher manse-generator was highly inefficient...

... burning man. "Just die!" she roared, slung over her fiancé's shoulder. From the depths of infinity, the sand came. And this time, the charging man failed to dodge, and the razor-winds took him in the chest, sending him sprawling for the second time this day. With another snarled invective, a second silver storm cut towards the fallen man, scourging the armour.

"What are you doing!" Wardes yelled at her, in between breaths.

"I knocked the Dr... dragon-like man down!" she answered.

There was a pause. "Keep on doing that!" he ordered, panting. "No," he corrected himself, and slid her down. Louise hated herself for blushing as she felt her night-dress ride up, and thanked the Founder that she had put on those riding breeches and her coat.

Looking up, the tree was directly above. "What now?" she asked, lowering her staff-glaive and looking behind her.

"Now... we..." Wardes gulped down air. He had lost his hat somewhere along the way, and was covered in sweat. "Upwards. Hold... on. And hold them, Henri," he said, to the last knight. One arm wrapped around Louise, clutching her tight to his chest, and he cast Levitation. The difference between what he could do, even tired and out of breath, and what the mages she knew could do was astonishing. They rocketed up, fast enough that Louise clung back as hard as she could with her free arm. Looking down, she could see the chaotic, disordered streets of La Rochelle from above, showing how literally natural fissures in the rock had been turned in canyons and then streets. Worse, she could trace their flight through the streets. Where the city was lit normally by torches and lanterns and magelights, she could trace the fire from the burning hotel, along a path made of burning wall-hangings and coverings which jinked in the canyon-streets, all the way to just before the foot of the tree. Even from this height, she could see the bonfire-presence of the... of the dragonblood, and as she watched, it began to move again, heading for the tree.

From somewhere, she found strength to cling onto Viscount Wardes even tighter, and she did not let go until the ship detached, the shouting as her fiancé forced the captain, at sword point, to cast off. And as they sailed away, she could see the ship which would have departed tomorrow morning, to Germania, burning like a funeral pyre.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Tabitha woke to the all-too-familiar mix of bitterness and honey-sweet between her lips. Gagging slightly, she stirred, squinting up at the blue-haired figure leaning over her. "Mama?" she muttered softly, too weak to reach for her glasses. "... glad you're here."

"Come on, Big Sister!" the figure said, exuberantly. "Eat the nice-nice honey with the I-don't-know-how-nice-it-is-but-it-smells-pretty-not-nice medicine thingie in it, so you can get all better."

The girl frowned, trying to think through the fuzziness in her mind. She didn't have a younger sister, did she, she thought, as she swallowed. With a titanic effort, she managed to lift an arm, and grope around, eventually finding that her glasses had been pushed up onto her forehead. Slipping them back down, the soot-stained, dishevelled face of her familiar came into view, a wide grin on the girl's face as she turned over the hourglass by the bed with deliberate intent. Her face appeared to be smeared in something sticky which, from what Tabitha could guess, appeared to be honey. Behind her, propped against one wall, there was a figure in what looked like white-painted armour, oozing blood which had left a streak down the wall where the body had slumped down.

"...what... happened?" Tabitha managed.

"Oh, that's a long, long story. See I ran out of honey so I had to get honey because you're sick because you caught a cold and then got worse... oh, and also there's a hotel on fire outside and lots and lots of men with the nasty-smelling guns in the streets and those people who smelt not like proper people are being all kinds of pretty-glowing colours, only the pretty colours are like magic and burning everything and the men on the tasty tasty griffins that we were following are fighting them and the mercenaries and the pink-haired girl who doesn't sweat was smelling all of sand and burning and she was glowing a scary green again and she was fighting the magic glowing people and then they escaped over a rooftop and I saw that while circling when I was trying to remember where the hotel was... oh, and also I was stopped by a golem which turned out to be a person when I was bringing back the honey so I bought it back so we could get rid of the body and the golem-armour they're wearing is pretty and shiny so I thought it could be a nice present for you and maybe because I'm looking after you I could get to eat their tongue and maybe maybe their heart because they're really nice and tasty and I got you a present and looked after you so I should get something nice too."

The bespectacled girl groaned, and slumped back down. She must be very sick indeed to be hallucinating like this. And it seemed likely that her familiar was somehow cheating to avoid the need to breathe. "No eating people," she said, weakly, as she slumped back down, falling asleep again.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Above the clouds, all was cold and bright, the two moons shining down in blue and red. Behind them, there was a hint of red from below the clouds, but up here, the light of Dorika dominated. The ship was rising, up above the low-hanging clouds, crewmen running around as it tacked through the heavens, catching the winds coming in off the Great North Sea.

The pink-haired girl with the green brand on her forehead shivered, and not just from the cold. Like a drowning man, she clung onto the Staff of Destruction, and her eyes flicked from left to right, trying to keep the entire area in view. A blanket had been dumped onto her shoulders, but she made no motion to tuck it in closer.

"Louise. My dearest, sweetest Louise." Wardes' hands were on her shoulders. Leaning forwards, he stared into her eyes; first one, then the other. "Bring towels!" he ordered the ship's crew, his voice loud and commanding. "And water... I'll heat it myself! Step to it!" Shaking his head, his hands ran down her arms, to take both of her hands firmly.

"I killed people today," Louise said softly, her mouth hanging open. "I... I don't think I've done that before. And... it was easy. The Staff of Destruction is just so sharp."

"Louise, listen to me, my dear..."

"It just goes in, through their armour, and... and the musketeers. And the knights. They're... they're dead, aren't they? Where's... there was one more with us. One more, apart from de Trebourne... he's dead. They... they killed him. But where's the other one?"

"Louise!" Wardes gripped her hands. "I believe you are in shock, my dear," he said, more gently. "Come with me, below decks. It is cold out here; I wouldn't want you to catch a chill. It's just you and me on this mission, and we cannot fail the Princess, can we?" He took a breath. "And he was protecting us as we levitated up," Wardes said. "He was a good man. He died for the Princess, yes?"

The girl blinked. "No," she said, head bobbing up and down as she nodded. "We mustn't fail Henrietta. I mean, the Princess. She is my good friend. I am her subject. Even... even if the musketeers and the knights just... just died like that." Numbly, she let Wardes guide her downstairs, led by the captain. The two men said some things together, the sailor sounding a little whiny, Wardes authoritative and commanding, before she was guided in to sit on the bed, the two men leaving her alone.

The bright lights seemed to help things, Louise thought to herself, looking around the quartered. They were cramped, yes, but there was at least a small basin with a mirror of polished metal over it, in an alcove, and a bed set up on some kind of cradle system. Staff of Destruction still in hand, she made her way over to the mirror, swaying slightly from the motion of the ship.

Her hair was singed. Her clothing was scorched, and stank of smoke. The emblem of the crossed swords still blazed in the centre of her forehead. Her face was reddened, and the pain of the burns on her hands and arms was a nagging pain that she could not shut off. But none of it was as horrible, as loathsome as the splatters of blood that coated her face, dried in dark brown splodges that looked perversely like freckles on her pale skin.

"_Oh, my lady,_" Marisalon said gently, "_you did so very well to survive that. They were coming directly for you, and you managed to get away. And did you not take revenge, by killing them? I do not believe that any of those ones bore the blood of the dragon, but, still, you hurt them, and you should take some pride in that. You took down the child of Heshiash who was coming after you! Twice! That thing with the floor was wonderful, my fairest lady! You are a genius!_"

"I don't feel wonderful," Louise said to her own reflection, still wearing the blood of the corporal on her face. "I feel like... I feel terrible. They died because of me. I... I think they liked me. Sort of." She sniffed, rubbing her eyes on her sleeve, and the sweatless smoothness of her skin felt alien to her. The ship swayed, and she moved with it. "What... what did I do to make this happen?"

"_You are a princess of the green sun, and they are traitors and usurpers. That is what they do, their kind. They kill, and they murder, and they enslave, and they bind my kind to service. They usurped the King of Creation, and imprisoned the ones who made the world. One such as you, a princess of the forces of righteousness, is an intrinsic threat to their false reign, are you not?_

"You'd said that before," Louise said, softly, sweeping her singed hair back. "I... I don't think I really understood what you meant by that before. They... they just... they just killed them. L-like they didn't matter. They... they were c-commoners, but..." she let out a sniffle-hiccup, "she just came apart when that s-sword c-cut her and..."

Behind her, the door opened, and hit her in the back. "Oh, my Louise, I am sorry," Wardes said. "I must also apologise for the delay, because the commoner crewmen were most inefficient and ineffective at responding to my most casual requests for water and towels. I also acquired some clothing for you; they had spares for some of the boys on ship, so, to avoid the chill, it might be best to wear these tomorrow."

"It is nothing, my lord," Louise said, her voice hollow, as she stepped away from the mirror, allowing Wardes to enter fully.

The man gulped down an annoyed curse when his sword snagged on the door, and the sword was, from its complaints, not too happy about such treatment, either. He unbuckled the blade, and, taking the Staff from Louise, set the two weapons down in the anteroom. Gesturing towards the bed, he said, "Please, sit down, my Louise. I bought these to help you."

"Thank you." She did not move, as he rested the basin down, a soft incantation warming it, and began to dab at her face with a towel, removing the stains of blood. He was warm and large and comforting beside her, and the pink-haired girl could not help but lean into him, especially when the small bed barely gave enough room for both of them to sit.

"So, what did they do?" he asked, dabbing at her.

"They... Anne-Sophie opened the door to the password from... from the others," Louise began. "And... I think they must h-have been behind them. Their... their armour blended into the background. They... they just killed the corporal. Dominique. She... today she was showing me how to use a bayonet. And... and she's dead."

The warm towel moved over the mark on her forehead, which was still glowing, although its intensity had dinned. "It shines through the towel, did you know?" Wardes said, curiosity in his voice. "It's almost like a familiar brand, but... clearly, it is not."

Louise said nothing.

"Your magic is powerful," Wardes said, slowly slipping unfastening the front of her coat. "Can you help me get this off. I want to have a look at the burns on your arms. I can see your hands are hurt, and from the way you're moving..."

"Oh, of course." Wincing slightly, Louise pushed his fingers away, and with numb fingers undid the coat, letting it slide off her shoulders, leaving her in her torn nightdress, hastily donned breeches, and riding boots. "It does hurt," she admitted. "H-he was glowing like me, but... but I don't burn things. My fire is c-cold. His was hot."

The grey-eyed man made a noise of sympathy. "I always carry some burn balm with me," he said. "I've learned the hard way that fire mages hurt and those... men may not have been mages, but they still burn." There was a cooling sensation on her hands as he knelt before her, swaying with the motion of the boat, massaging a bluish paste from a small pot into her flesh, and the pain dimmed.

"Thank you."

"My dear Louise, I would be a terrible man if I did not offer my help to you." He shook his head, rising, to sit beside her again, his weight in the bed enough that she slid towards him. "We were attacked," he said, coldly.

"Yes."

"Such an attack? In La Rochelle? It will draw attention. I do not doubt that the Dragon Knights will be there within a day. Perhaps we will have answers as soon as we get back, and can attend the hangings of the monsters responsible, yes?"

Louise rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. "That would be nice," she said, a touch dreamily. She was, she realised, only covered by a torn, thin nightdress. But at the moment, that didn't seem so important. She was alive, by the grace of God...

"_... and the power granted to you by Malfeas._"

... and the power of the King, yes, whose very name made her feel warm and snug and giggly, and... after a moment's thought, she wrapped her arms around the solid, warm body of Viscount Wardes, who, from the inhalation of breath, seemed somewhat surprised by the sudden motion. After a second, though, his arms wrapped back around her thin body, bringing her closer, and shifting slightly, he shifted, bringing his face down to hers.

His beard and moustache were tickly as they kissed. Louise mashed her lips into his in an inexpert, unpracticed, and desperate way, holding onto him as if he was the only thing which kept her from falling off this ship, down into the deep, dark waters below to be lost without a trace.

* * *

{0}

* * *

In the anteroom, just outside the bedchamber, lay discarded packs and weapons.

"Well, I think my partner's getting lucky tonight." Resting against the wall, protruding slightly from its sheath, the ancient, pitted sword somehow managed to give off the distinct air that it was leering. "Good on him. What humans do to make more humans is just a degenerate, ineffective form of stabbing, and stabbing is the best thing ever!"

A pause, and the darkened room was lit for a moment in pale light.

"You're the quiet sort? Don't want to talk? Well, I like them quiet... humans like talking too much. You saucy minx. Just look at your pole, and that blade? That blade? I normally prefer them honed, more straight-edged, but for you, I'll make an exception! I've haven't seen something quite with edges like yours in a long while! So jagged! Mmm-hmm!" The sword coughed. "So, what do you like to do, lady?"

The light returned, shifting and pulsing, as if its source was moving.

"I mean, I go centuries without meeting another proper weapon, and then I meet a bunch all at once! I knew it was a good idea calling for Partner! Why aren't you talking to me? So, what's your history?"

There was a somewhat harsher light, tinged for a moment with colour.

"Come on! Don't be too shy! Partner's partner, your partner, doesn't seem to be the shy sort!"

And, eyelessly, silently the Derflinger stared at the Staff of Destruction, colourless fire floating across the crystalline blade of the polearm, even as other noises emerged from the next room along.

* * *

{0}

* * *

That night, the dreams of Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière were filled with blood and breaking and so much light.

* * *

{0}


	12. 11: Night and Falls

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 11: Night and Falls**

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was not the creaking of the windship that woke Louise, but the warm light against her face. It was soft, golden-red, and quite unlike the light and pain and rage of her dreams. For a while she lay there, face lit by the rising sun, her back warmed by another's flesh.

Then came the shame, and her eyes snapped open. She was lying on a tight bed, facing the small porthole which, curtains undrawn, looked east towards the dawn. A sheet covered her, the thick cloth speckled with blood which looked very much like it had come from her accidentally cutting her hands in the night. Pulling her hands out from under the sheets, she examined them; they were still reddened and burnt, and – she shuddered – there were traces of dried blood under her fingernails. Shifting slightly, she could tell that she was very much naked.

And twisting in the bed, knowing what she would see behind her, but forced to check anyway, she gazed upon a mass of silver-grey hair, and the back of a similarly unclad man.

Louise could _feel _the smugness of the neomah, a palpable feeling of contentment, and the warm, _hot _sensation of it in her mind which warred with the shame of what she'd done.

"_My beautiful, kindly princess of the green sun,_" Marisalon said, right on cue, "_why feel shame for this? It is natural, is it not? You wanted to do it, did you not? You enjoyed it, did you not?_"

The pink-haired girl – did she count as a woman now? – went to reflexively deny it. Only the fact that she did not wish to wake Wardes beside her stopped her from shouting it out loud, and the moment of self-reflection was just enough to clamp one hand over her own mouth. She still made a muffled noise into her palm.

Wardes made a snuffling noise, and shifted, making the floor creak.

She had to get out of here. That much, Louise was certain of, and slowly, gingerly, she picked her way out of the narrow bed while trying not to make noise. This was harder than might be thought; it was cold out from under the covers. Her breath was visible in the morning air, and the burns on her hands and arms ached, although they were healing well – no doubt thanks to the balm the Viscount had provided. Goosepimples prickled over her arms and back as, hopping, she scrambled over to find her discarded clothing. A moment's glance out of the window revealed the waters below the wispy white layer of clouds, before she returned to her hunt.

The garments were in a sorry state of affairs indeed. Her drawers were, thankfully, wearable, though her lack of changes would be a concern, and she slipped them on without a second thought. The same could not be said for the remnants of her nightgown, which was torn, sprayed with – Louise swallowed at the memory – the blood of the musketeer corporal, and burned from the fires of the monstrous dragonblooded man. Her riding coat had been through the same experiences, but it was thicker and had survived better, and in the chill of the windship, Louise had no real choice but to put it on, shivering. She had not been wearing her corset when the attack had come, and the fabric was rough against her skin, especially on her burned arms.

A stiffness in the riding coat reminded her of the presence of Princess Henrietta's letter, and she pulled it out of her pocket, to check it was still there. It was crumpled and bent, but the wax seal was still intact, and so was the warning glow that lit up when she touched the seal. Hastily, she pulled back from it; the princess would not be happy with her if she accidentally destroyed the letter by breaking the wards, after all. She would defend that letter with her life, she swore to herself.

"_Aww,_" Marisalon commented, with a slight pout. "_I was curious._"

'You can stay curious,' Louise mentally retorted. 'That's her highnesses' letter. Now, the Viscount said that he'd bought some more clothes for me because...'

"_To your right, up against the wall, fairest lady,_" the neomah interrupted, in a slightly bored tone of voice. "_Ah, that was an enjoyable night, was it it?_"

'Shut _up!_' was the response, as Louise picked up the folded clothes, shaking them out and letting the moth-scaring leaves folded in the cloth fall out. The girl's jaw tightened, both from annoyance at her perverted head familiar, but also what she would be expected to wear. No doubt Viscount Wardes had done the best he could, but the clothes that a ship's boy – who would be the only person who had clothes her size – would be expected to wear were... not to her tastes. The shirt, she felt, rubbing it between her fingers, was made of rough linen; her curtains were made of finer cloth. There were more pairs of drawers, but just one look at the yellowed fabric suggested they were old, worn by others and sent to spares, and she resolved to see if there was any way whatsoever to wash her own ones on this ship. The breeches were similarly ill-suited, and worse, as she tried them on, she found that they were ill-shaped, too wide around the waist but narrow at the hips. Reluctantly, she discarded them, and put on her old riding breeches which still smelt of horse over the hose provided.

On the bed, Wardes shifted, rolling over slightly into the vacancy she had left. Louise froze, caught in the attempt to fasten up the buttons at the front, but he seemed to still be asleep.

"_He is very attractive, is he not? I did not quite appreciate how muscled he was until we saw more of him_," Marisalon said slyly.

Mutely, Louise nodded, as she tried to find somewhere to sit which was not the floor or the bed, where she could pull on the itchy socks. There wasn't really anywhere.

"_And he's certainly too good to be a virgin._"

The problem of 'where to sit' was solved by her legs bucking under her. "You don't know that," she let out, in a breathy squeak before she clamped her hands over her mouth again. 'You don't!' Louise added mentally.

"_Ah._" A dark chuckle. "_Trust me, I know. Virgins have no idea what they're doing, beyond the most basic things... and even then, some humans can be dreadfully ill-informed about what should come naturally to them. It really makes no sense, the preference for virgins for s..._"

'Shut up shut up shut up!' Louise was, by now flushing bright scarlet, an unhelpful part of her brain – which was not the perverted head familiar – suggesting that at least she felt warmer now. 'Not another word!' She took a deep breath, and focussed finding her boots, trying not to shake, forcing her temper down until she could find something to hit. And in doing so, she had to face certain hard facts. Her talk with Montmorency, only a few days ago – by the Founder, had it only been so short a time? – had made it quite clear the promiscuity of her classmates. And men were perverted and lecherous, anyway; her mother had made it quite clear that boys were not to be trusted in such manners.

But this was Viscount Wardes! They had been engaged since he had been sixteen, and she six! He had no reason to do something like that, especially when it might risk his marriage to a de la Vallière... ah, of course. Yes! He may have... fooled around... with commoner maids and such things beforehand – God knew such things happened, and God _did _know, because it was a sin – but afterwards would be unwise! And foolish!

"_My lady, are you considering the existence of contracep..._"

'Shut up!' Snatching up her staff-glaive, the blushing maiden – well, that wasn't quite true anymore – stared at her feet as if sufficient rage would make her boots lace themselves up. That did not prove to be the case, and so it was a few minutes before Louise snuck out of the cabin, headed up towards the deck, the riding boots still in hand.

She needed some fresh air. But above that, she needed to get away.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Above, the mist-wetted mast and sails creaked, lit in rosy pink by dawnlight. Louise took a sharp inhalation as she stepped out onto the deck, tasting salt, tar, wax and a hint of mildew. Her boots were still being carried; she had found that these thick scratchy socks were almost like shoes in their own right. In them she had padded past the galley silently, where the cook was just stirring in his hammock slung up over the common mess tables, and up the stairs onto deck.

It was even colder here than in the cabin, the winds like chill hands against her face, but she didn't mind so much. Better up here than in the cabin below, and when the wind enveloped and surrounded her, rather than just being a cold draft through a window, it wasn't so bad. The fact that she was now dressed properly was admittedly a great help.

"_You know, my fair lady,_" said Marisalon, thoughtfully, "_that sunrise is most beautiful. Really, that is probably one of the greatest advantages of sunrises and sunsets, though I __would not gainsay the nature of the Green Sun and his position, of course._"

Louise, who had been preparing a rant at her perverted head familiar, paused, her flow completely broken off. To cover for her confusion, she sat, and began to put her boots on, because the deck was wet, and though the sheep who had provided the wool had been apparently proof against a pistolshot so thick were the socks, she suspected that it would take an act of God, or well-controlled fire magic, to get them dry again in a reasonable time.

"It is," she said out loud, simply, as she stood again, stepping over to the east-facing side to gaze over the edge, down to the waters far below the windship. The starboard mast had its sails pulled in tight, and underneath her, the entire ship swung, as it began another tack, cutting its way against the polar winds which buffeted the northern coast of Tristain. A glance back confirmed that she could no longer see the mountains behind her, and she smiled from the pure exultation of having escaped.

And... and she _felt _different this morning. There was a swelling warmth in her chest, which filled her, leaving her feeling stronger, more certain, even – and this was a strange sensation indeed – more real. How was that possible?

She was deliberately not thinking of the _other _explanation for why she felt like this. She was fairly sure that it did not work that way.

Almost unconsciously, she spun on her toe, and took a step away from the edge. Spreading her arms wide, she leapt into a second spin, bringing her arms in before landing in a crouch, twirling her staff-glaive around her in an arc of flashing silver. And rising, Louise began to dance in the dawnlight, something inside her responding to the morning radiance and something to the partner-less waltz. It _felt _right, and in celebration, in elation, her riding boots clicked against the wooden deck as she span across, shifting as she did to account for the movement of the ship under her.

A whirling dervish she danced across the deck. Through brazen streets under a viridian sun that turned its face from her and down streets of gold as the sky gained a bluish taint and the star bled to yellow, through cities alien and majestic. The song of Marisalon was a strange minor note in her skull, a song alive and harmonic that flowed and changed to her movements, even as her steps altered to keep with the beat. Entwined, they were; entwined and inseparable, and as she danced she could feel the burning heart within her chest. Were she to open her eyes a little wider, were she to stretch, she was sure that there would be light streaming from her eyes and mouth, and now, in this moment, it was not a strangeness to her.

And then the moment was gone, and she was merely Louise again.

"_My fair princess, you are never 'merely' anything,_" Marisalon said reverently.

She was merely Louise, and before her stood one of the sailors, wringing his dew-sodden cap between his hands with glazed eyes. His lips didn't even attempt to move; he just stood there, vapid, a hollow shell of a man. And looking around, all the other sailors on deck were staring too. Including the one in the fancier hat at the wheel, which she was pretty sure wasn't meant to happen.

"W-well," Louise snapped, internally cursing the slight stammer. "What are you l-looking at?" Straightening up to her full height, or at least as much of it as there was of it, she tried to gaze down her nose at him. It would have worked better had she not been staring up.

"Um... well... um..." the man stammered, before something in his mind seemed to flicker, and he became more than a puppet.

"Out of my way!" she ordered, and the man positively leapt to the side. Inwardly, she smiled. A proper level of respect and compliance with a noble. Good. She had been somewhat concerned that the sailors – who were, as all men knew, a rough and uncouth bunch – might be problematic, but that had proven not to be the case. With an imperious gesture, she flapped her hand at the ship, taking in it and its crew. "Back to work!" she ordered. "Do your duty!"

There was a sudden flurry of activity, men turning back to ropes and rigging, and no small amount of swearing in Low Tristainian as the consequences of their inattentiveness were made clear. Through them, a pink-haired figure with a shining staff, strode Louise, casting an eye over the crew as she headed towards one of the benches positioned at the aft of the ship, behind the wheel.

"Milady!" the duty officer at the wheel blurted out. The girl boggled slightly, for looking closer, the man appeared to be crying, tears rolling down his face.

"What is it?" Her eyes narrowed. "Aren't you meant to be making this thing go where it's meant to go?"

He nodded his head, neck jerking up and down like some kind of china doll. "Yes milady! Ah... thank you milady! For that! Thank you! Won't trouble you no more!"

Louise bristled, looking for mockery. There... appeared to be none. But that wasn't right. People didn't normally act like that towards her. She _wanted _them to, yes, dreamed of it, but like many dreams, it was more than a little disconcerting in real life.

Oh well. She could take a little disconcertion for some proper respect. And she would have to remember this trick for later. Maybe Viscount Wardes would... and she sunk her bright-red face into her hands, while in her head the neomah giggled. Yes. Viscount Wardes. How was she going to deal with this? She had... and he had... and they hadn't been married and that was _wrong_ even if they were engaged and... what was going to happen now? What if she was pregnant? How could she face him, face mother, face _anyone_? What was she going to do?

* * *

{0}

* * *

As it so happened, trying to avoid Viscount Wardes for as much of the voyage as possible was what she ended up doing. It didn't end up being fully deliberate; the ship had cast off early by their command, and so the skytides were not optimal. The Viscount was rather busy providing helpful winds; Louise had seen him standing on the mast, concentrating.

Of course, that meant that since she was... well, not avoiding him, because that would be both rude and unbecoming of her, but, yes, giving him some space... that meant that she could not be on deck at the same time he was. And that was somewhat inconvenient, as, despite the chill, the deck was the most pleasant place to be. As a result, she spent rather a lot of time in her own quarters, with not too much to do and a far less pleasant view.

Louise had made an effort to take in some of the clothing and fix some of the holes. Unfortunately, even the power of Malfeas, his sheer force and will, could not help her inadequacy in the arts of sewing. Her riding coat was fairing the best; she had managed to attach some leather patches over the top of the large holes and stitch closed the smaller ones, and she had hardly pricked her fingers on the needle and thread at all! The nightgown, by contrast, was basically ruined. She had cut off the burnt sleeves and had it washed; the main result of that was that it no longer kept her arms warm, and she had not been able to remove all the bloodstains. It now lived in a crumpled ball in the corner. The less said about her experiments in bringing in and letting out some of the rough clothing made for a ship's boy, the better.

As a consequence of this, she was looking rather tatterdemalion on those times when she did venture out of the cabin. Trimming off the singed locks of hair helped somewhat, but another reason she kept out of the public eye was... well, to be quite honest, a male might be able to get away with wearing lower class garb and rely on his innate bearing and presence, but most unfairly the same was not acceptable for a woman. Especially not when most of her clothing was made for a man, and she even lacked a mantle! Quite unacceptable!

It wasn't that she was avoiding Viscount Wardes. Not at all.

Still, there were times that that had to meet, and there she resorted to a scrupulous, rigid formality as best she could, knowing what had happened between them and knowing that he knew too – how could he not?

"My Louise," he began, as they sat with a rough wooden table between them, a single lantern hanging from the ceiling to alleviate the gloom, "you are looking pale. Are you eating properly?"

"I b-believe I am doing acceptably," she responded, poking at the stew with her fork. It was mutton, and she was none too fond of it. Looking up, she forced herself to smile; it would not be done to worry him. "I think it... it is just delayed worry from the attack at La Rochelle," she lied. "D-do you have any idea who those scoundrels were?"

"The men in armour?" he asked, raising his grey eyebrows. "At first I thought they were part of the Albionese Grenadier Guard, for they wear heavy armour which covers all their features. But upon further thought, no. They do not do such things... certainly not with such subtlety, they would have been bigger than our attackers, and their armour was not as..." the man searched for words, "... strange as those murderous monsters wore."

"Mmm," Louise said, gaze dropping again to her unappetising meal.

"Of course," Wardes continued, in a somewhat thoughtful tone, "there have been rumours of certain metal monsters throughout the years, illusive and murderous." He sighed. "Ah, but how to tell them apart from golems? You saw how Fouquet operated, yes?"

Louise nodded, hair falling in front of her face, before she blew it away with an annoyed exhalation.

"Imagine if she did not make one giant golem, but instead made a small one as powerful as possible. I have faced two of those in my career," and he even looked somewhat disquieted, "and they were annoyingly resilient to my own attacks. A golem made out of good quality steel and layered with wet clay, socketed with windstones to prevent it falling through thin floors, and earthstones to make it more resilient and intelligent, is a most dangerous opponent." He shook his head. "Though even those do not compare to the burning figure."

The girl did not respond, but instead focussed on chewing a particularly tenacious piece of meat. She wasn't going to tell him any of the things she knew about the 'dragon blooded', that Marisalon had mentioned to her and that the _other _memories had...

"What's that, Marus?" she said, sitting back, spreading her legs a little wider as she relaxed under the attention. Through half-lidded eyes, she peaked over at her old comrade. "What did you say?"

"I said," the man said, "_she's _still after me. And..."

"... Louise?" The Viscount's grey-blue eyes were sharp, over his pleasant smile; cold and questing and fixed precisely on her. "My sweet Louise, you just... I don't know what you said."

She took in a breath, her eyes flickering over his face. The... the madness, the other memories had been like a hammer of colour and light and pleasure and all too many things, slammed straight into her senses and then pulled away leaving her in this ill lit cabin again. She took a second breath, until her lungs were full, holding herself with imperious grace. "I am quite fine," she said, each word selected. She tried to imitate the expression she had seen Mother use on the rare occasions someone dared stand up to her. Louise knew she would normally be blushing; she was not blushing. Oh, her face would be bright red when she got back to her quarters, and she could feel the worry coming on, but for now, this was _her_. Her eyes dared him to challenge her. "I was thinking of something; I must apologise if I said it out loud. And," she scooped up her bowl and the cutlery, "I must take my leave from you. Good night to you, Viscount; I will see you in the _morning_," she said, putting heavy emphasis on the last word. And with that, she swept out, a gesture which would have been majestic in a gown, but was instead almost militant in her rough shirt and breaches.

She did not look behind her, even as a feeling of hot desert winds pushed against her and a subtle tightness in her head told her something was close to breaking point.

Back in her quarters, though, she sunk down onto the bed, head resting on her knees. What had possessed her to do that? _Who_ had possessed her to do that? She... oh, it had just _worked,_with the way she had not contemplated that he would disagree with her, and that iron-clad certainty that though she may have slipped last night, she would not do so tonight.

"Is this how Mother feels _all the time?_" Louise whispered to herself. "I... it... I w-would never have d-dared to do that before. And don't you _dare _suggest that it was because... because of the... the physical intimacy," she added, to the neomah in her head. "That wouldn't leave me acting l-like that in front of the viscount."

"_My lady,_" Marisalon began, hesitantly, "_firstly, I must say that could have been handled with more finesse. He is your fiancé, and he has power and influence; you do not want to alienate him._"

"I know. Oh, Founder, I know," she said, softly, staring up at the ceiling and realising that it was lit palely in green. The pink-haired girl slapped her hand over her forehead, and the light went away. "I... I was showing. In front of him. And the..." she remembered that she wasn't going to mention the other memories to the perverted head-familiar, "...glow. Was I?"

"_Fairest lady, he knows already,_" Marisalon said tartly. "_When the Dragonblooded and their lackeys attacked, he saw you in very nearly your full glory, as you most valiantly smote them._"

Louise worked her mouth. "Oh. Oh yes," the girl managed.

"_But my princess," she continued. "Much as I hate to contradict your most magnanimous whims, I do believe that the physical intimacy, as you most elegantly and tactfully put it, may be behind this. It is merely not in the sense that you meant._" The neomah paused, and Louise could almost feel the desire of the other being to rub her legs together. "_You are angry at him, and you are angry at yourself for last night._"

"Why would I be angry? He is handsome and charming and strong and he risked his life to save mine and... and..." she balled her hands into fists, ignoring the pain as her brass nails dug into her palms, "... and neither of us had the right! We weren't married and... and..."

Louise trailed off, her hand going to hold the medallion he had given her. It was so pretty, so well-picked. And she was acting like a child but it had been wrong and; oh!

"It wasn't right..." she muttered softly to herself, the tears rolling down her face. "I... he... I _enjoyed it _and... it... people were trying to kill us and there were all those people dead and..." she let out a frustrated scream, rolling over to start sobbing into the pillow.

"_There, there_," the neomah said, ineffectually. "_Perhaps, my lady, it would be best for you to get some sleep. You have not been sleeping well; neither on the journey here, nor the nightmares before, nor last night. Perhaps in part you are just exhausted._"

"I don't want to sleep," the pink-haired girl muttered into the bed-coverings. "I might... I might dream. Of... anything."

"_Sleep, dearest lady. Wear what you will for sleep, and slumber. You will feel better with rest, I assure you_."

And eventually, to the alien words of the songs of the neomah, she did just that.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise woke screaming, blankets tangled up in her legs, skin bone-dry.

"_Fairest lady! What is it?_" Marisalon snapped awake.

The girl gasped for air, sitting bolt upright. Shivering in the chill, she crossed her arms over her chest. "They... he was coming for me, burning, and the armour and..." she managed, trying to grasp onto the dream-memories, which were vanishing like the morning's mist. "No stars, no moon, and it... it was so far to the exit. S-so many. K-kill him once and ten ones just like him take his pl-place, and... and I knew how _they _must have felt when we did it to them, and..." she trailed off. Shivering uncontrollably, she dove back under the blankets.

"_Um. My princess, but... what?_"

Louise did not respond at first, curled up in a ball, panting. "Nightmares," she managed, eventually. "Just... nightmares." The dreams were gone entirely, now; in the cold morning air she could only remember the alarm turning to panic turning to terror. Her body, and her heartbeat which hammered against her chest, remembered what she could not. Groggily, she poked her head out again, into the pre-dawn dimness, before retreating again, burrowing her head in her pillow. "You said I'd feel better with rest!" she groaned into it. "Can't I sleep properly? And why does it have to be so cold up here!"

After quarter of an hour of trying to get back to sleep, though, Louise had found that it simply wasn't going to work. Her heart was still beating like a drum, and she knew that, if she had not ceased to sweat, she would have been cold and clammy. Looking around the room, she noticed the remnants of the meal that she had bought up the previous night. After only a little bit of self-argumentation, she forced herself to get up and get dressed; at least that way she would be warmer. The meal, however, revealed itself to be cold and partially congealed, the turnips sticky lumps in a fatty mess.

She ate it anyway.

And as she placed the plate on the small cabinet bolted to the floor, she glanced out the porthole, and saw, up in the sky just below the clouds, a great whitish-grey shadow, the first hints of dawn illuminating the east of it. Once again, it was as she was a little girl, beside her father and Eleanoré, watching the first sight of the White Island on deck.

Albion.

It was, however, too early in the morning, and too cold to be out on deck, so she retreated, fully clothed, back under the covers, to wait for it to warm up even a fraction.

And, annoyingly, by the time she decided to venture forth to deck, she was confronted by the captain in the corridor. He was not wearing his hat, and his hair was windblown, slightly matted by sweat. "My lady, please stay in your cabin," he said, looking somewhat harassed. "We will be passing into a strong up-current, thanks to the viscount making arrangements to boost the warm-rising current, and... please, just stay in your cabin. It will be rather rough."

Louise shot a look at the man, his face illuminated by the hanging lamps. "I am headed onto deck," she told the commoner coldly, "and I do not appreciate you barring my passage."

"Milady, please, my men will be roped in, while," and then he made a mistake, going for humour, "... well, I am afraid that you are a little smaller than my... ah..."

The man could not help but suffer the horrifying sensation that the drop in temperature he felt was not merely figurative, as the girl's pink-brown eyes bored into him like a knife. "I am headed onto deck," she told him, in a tone of voice which was a statement of fact rather than a request. "You will get out of my way."

"O-of c-course, milady," he said, nearly leaping in his eagerness to get aside, "but..." the man added, as the boat creaked under its ascent and both of them were forced to grab for the nearest wall to avoid falling, "l-let me accompany you. And then..." he trailed off, but rallied, "maybe you might like to go back to your cabin, until we level out. Milady."

"Good!" Louise snapped at him, still bristling from the man's words, "and bear in mind that... oh!" She paused, mid-scolding, with an inhalation. "Viscount Wardes," she said to the grey-haired man, who approached from behind the man, "good morning to you." He looked spotless once again, somehow managing to keep his clothes neat and perfect despite the uncivilised conditions, and she sighed mentally at her rather tattered state. At least she did not smell of sweat; that would have been intolerable.

"My dear Louise," he replied in acknowledgement, "it is a little early for you to be up and about, is it not?"

The girl scanned his face, eyes flicking across his features for any sign of odd reactions or suspicion from her fiancé. Had he seen the oddities last night, her accidental... glow? Did he think she was some kind of freak?

"_My fair princess, stay focussed on the moment,_" Marisalon advised. "_Do not fret overmuch, or you will give more away._"

The neomah was annoyingly right, she thought, with a twitch, so instead she forced herself to smile at the grey-eyed man. "I forgot to close the shutters," she said, as airily as she could. "And then I noticed Albion, so I was headed out onto deck to get a better look."

Wardes pursed his lips. "I am afraid, my dear, that such would not be necessarily wise," he said, frowning. "Perhaps you do not know this, but when a ship rises, it can be rather rough; it is better by far to stay inside, and not be blown off the decks." He smiled, with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. "I would be most distraught if you fell off the ship, and though I could save you, it would be worrying for both of us."

"Nevertheless..." Louise began, and there was something inside her, a thrill as she contradicted him.

"And I feel we need to talk." He shot a glance at the captain. "In private," Wardes added, the other man scampering off graciously to avoid these two nobles and return to the much simpler affairs of his ship.

He led her back through the corridors of the ship, pausing by his own quarters, the light hanging from the ceiling swaying with the motion of the ship and sending dancing shadows gavotting across the walls. An old reflexive urge to protest, that it wasn't proper for her to be in a man's bedroom alone – except it wasn't like she was alone, Wardes was there, which was _exactly the problem_– raised itself, before Louise quashed it. She had already shown exactly why that sort of rule was needed, and now? Now there was no use crying over spilt milk. She must have hesitated, thought, because the older man paused.

"I'll go in first, so you're always near the door, but we will need to close it," he said, with a hint of apology in his voice. "This directly regards certain things that the commoner crew... should any be idling rather than working to take advantage of the strong upward current I helped arrange... yes, there are things that they should not be allowed to hear." He paused, and motioned at her to close the door; she did so. "I still do not know who attacked us in La Rochelle, and so I must fear spies at every corner," he said softly, his lips barely moving, as he sat down upon the narrow bed, which was a near exact replica of the one in Louise's quarters. This ship was not made for luxury nor to carry the nobility.

Drawing his wand, Wardes pointed it at the corners of the room, muttering a few words as he did, and the air shifted, the girl feeling her ears pop slightly. "We can talk freely now," the man continued, more loudly. "Though we had best not stay here too long, because the air will go bad."

Louise nodded. "I am sorry if I have been accidentally rude to you, my lord," she began, trying to get the apology out of the way as fast as she could. It might be necessary; that didn't mean that she _liked _saying that she was sorry for things. "Especially last night; I was feeling ill at ease in your presence."

"Why so formal?" he asked, jokingly, sitting back on the bed. "My dear Louise, that is only natural. And," he said, face darkening, "I fear I should be the one who is apologising to you. It was not proper of me to... well, we are but engaged, not yet married. I can only put it down to the mental exhaustion – which is just as true as that as the flesh – which comes after battle, especially when one is near-totally drained of willpower. I was not thinking clearly, and in that, it is all my fault for not being strong enough to resist you."

"_Resist us?_" Marisalon boggled. "_Excuse me! Fair lady, you have many virtues and will have more when you learn to use them properly, but you are not seductive except in the purely aesthetic way and..._"

Louise ignored the voice completely. He was taking the wrong-doing upon his own head, and looking into his eyes, she could see his concern. Swallowing, she nodded, and said, "I understand. And..."

"Should anything come of it, I will take full responsibility," he said clearly.

The girl blinked, and nodded wordlessly.

"And with that said," Wardes continued, eyes flickering over to the window, "yes. I have arranged for there to be a strong wind, to lift us up... it was not hard. Albion and its windstones do very strange things to the local air currents, and it was easier than it should have been to bind and knot one so we will rise. It will not be pleasant, but within a few hours, we should be over Albion... I, for one," he added, with a slight grimace, "will be sure to find somewhere to sit, and will try not to be sick. These fast ascensions are rougher than the roughest ocean. Then from thereon in..."

"We'll be in the clouds over Albion," Louise interjected, with a smile.

"Yes," the man said, looking surprised at her deduction. "Indeed, my little Louise, you are quite right. And from there, we will be able to sail low... though not too low... over Albion, with myself to keep watching eyes away, and come in over New Castle. It would be foolish to try to sail directly there, for most certainly the Republicans will have set up their own blockades, and this is a merchant ship. And in truth, I would not wish to take on the Republican fleet, damn their eyes to Svar, 'less I had the Tristainian fleet at my back. I talked to the captain, and he most readily agreed. Indeed, I would believe that man has done this before," Wardes said with a sight sneer. "Perhaps he has dabbled – or, indeed more – in smuggling." He sighed. "And all such men do things of this ilk; commoner captains have no God-given sense of justice, or so it would seem from the number who will break the law given the least chance. Still, that ill-gotten skill is useful to us, so I must show magnanimity towards him."

The boat creaked, buffeted by the air, and Louise grasped for the wall, managing to hold herself upright. "Perhaps it is better if I don't go up on deck," she said, after a moment's thought. "It seems to be getting rougher."

"That is probably wise," Wardes agreed, eyes teasing, before leaning forwards. "And," he added, "my Louise, given the events of this ill-fated mission, I must ask you of your magic." He raised a hand. "I do not wish to pry, but now it is only me and you, and you... well. In truth, I have seen nothing like some of the things you have done before. Does the Staff of Destruction bear its own powers?"

"_Careful..._" the voice in her head warned her, suddenly alert.

"It does, at least in part," Louise answered honestly. "For one, it is lighter than it should be, and for two, it... does this... this _thing_." Her hands scrunched the front of her shirt into a ball, as she looked for the right words, before smoothing it out again. It was the first time she had really thought about it, and with alarm, she realised that there was a cloud in her memory, an oddness, a thinness as if the foes were as thin as mist, washed away in dawnlight. "When it kills something, they... they... there's this light, and... I can't remember. As in, it... they..." she trailed off.

"I am your fiancé," said Wardes, earnestly, taking her hands. "You can trust that I want only the best."

She blinked heavily. "No, no," she explained hastily. "It's not that I don't want to talk, or that... that I'm scared like a little girl or something! It's that... I can't remember who they were. Or even much of what they looked like. I... I think they must have been like the other ones, but all... all I can remember clearly is what happened when they crumbled into crystal and..." Louise licked her lips. "I think... I think the magic kills them more than dead," she said, softly. "As in... it tries to make it almost like they never... never existed."

There was silence, broken only by the noise of the ship. "I see," Wardes said, eventually, at the end of the long silence. His lips twitched, but Louise could tell that the smile was fake. "Then I would suggest you keep good care of it, and avoid using such... such dangerous magics unless it is fully necessary." He drummed his fingers against his thigh, clearly thinking, taking this new information in. "And the other things? The green fire? The sand? The..." his hand brushed his forehead, tracing out a cross, "the rune on your forehead."

Louise swallowed. "That... that was me," she managed. "I can make those sand blasts with magic, and the green fire as well. Not the big green fire, a smaller one that burns things. The big one just seems to happen when I've used a lot of magic and... when I'm drained from it, I think it's something to do with that, and it's not actually hot." She paused, and fanned herself with her hand. "It's getting rather hot in here, isn't it?" she asked, trying to change the subject.

The grey-haired man smiled. "It is, isn't it? The warding spell also stops all the breezes that make this ship so damnably cold at times," he said, before his experience shifted to be more serious. "Louise, I think it would be best if you would return to your cabin. Not only will it be rough, it has become clear to me that I need you to think as hard as you can about everything your magic can do. It is strange to me, and as the Captain of the Griffin Knights, that says a lot. I want you to try to find out everything you can do, because it may be important for the mission." Rising to his feet, swaying slightly, the man let down the wards, the cold immediately coming back. "Can you do that for me?"

Louise nodded. "Yes, my lord," she said, sticking her chin out.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Cold and clammy, the ophidian tendrils of mist writhed against the closed shuttered, the clouds creeping through the cracks to cast a rainbow-like circle of light around the candle. Louise stretched out to her full length on the cramped bed, glad for once that she had room to spare. She sighed, turning over again to burrow her face into the pillow. In the cold and damp, everything was beginning to smell faintly of mildew, the scent creeping out of the tarred hold like an unwanted companion.

The girl was _bored_. The ascent, which had left her feeling skysick, had finished hours ago, and it was already growing dark outside as they crept through the clouds which covered Albion. There wasn't room to practice with her staff-glaive unless she wanted to ruin the ship and wreck the hull, she had nothing to read or do, and her only companion was the voice in her head. The weight of the Princess' letter pressed against her chest, tucked safely in the inside pocket, and a little voice in her head – who was not Marisalon – wanted to have a look at it, but she suppressed the urge. Even if it might give her power and blackmail material over Princess Henrietta she would not do it. She ignored the throbbing pressure in her head and the scent of cinnamon and lilies in her nostrils caused by that resolution. And anyway, to open it would be foolish; the letter would be enchanted such that only the Prince Wales could open it safely.

Mutely, she listened to the noise of the ship around her. The creaking of the timbers and the flap of the sails was the only noise; even the normal clamour was gone. They were 'flying silent', as the captain had told her apologetically, and that meant that no-one was to make any noise. Which also meant that she couldn't go get food from the galley. Not that she really wanted to, of course, because the slop was completely unbecoming of her, but at least it would be something to do.

She raised her head from the pillow, squaring her jaw, and rolled off the bed. In one motion, she blew out the candle, and then turned her attention to the shutters, throwing them wide open and remembering only at the last moment to catch them before they bounced off the wall. The cloud-mist came roiling in the dark, boiling in the residual heat before it was quenched, and enfolding her close in its grasp.

"_My most wonderfully fair lady_," Marisalon said, the undeniable note of petulance in her voice, "_it is cold – and wet, very wet. It's clouds. Made of water, not like proper weather._"

"A little cold never hurt anyone," the girl said softly, perching on the blocky cabinet in front of the window, and draping her arm out further into the mist. She smiled at the coadjutor's discomfit. "Anyway, I'm the one who's getting cold and wet, not you."

"_Mistress, I can still feel it... and I have a suspicion _you_ know that,_" muttered the neomah. "_Not that you would be so cruel, of course._"

Louise smirked out into the greyness of the clouds, occasional patches and shifts of darkness below a testament to how low the ship must have been flying – only this wasn't low at all, was it? They were very high, up in the clouds – it was Albion which flew, hiding itself in the cloud layers. There was silence save for the noises of the ship, everything muffled by the fog.

"So," she said, her voice little more than a whisper. "What now?"

"_But what do you mean, what now?_"

Louise frowned. "You know what I mean, stupid head-familiar. You're in my head. And something happened. Inside me." She blushed bright red, as her mind caught up with her mouth. "N-not like that, you... you perverted thing!" the girl blurted out.

"_I said nothing,_" Marisalon said, almost certainly falsely protesting innocence.

"I feel... hotter... inside. And more full! I think... ever since that fight, it's like..." she searched for words, "... like how you know what time of day it is even when you're away from the sun! Or how hot something is by holding a hand over it!" Louise hissed. "Not whatever perverted thing you were going to say!"

"_My princess of the green sun, why, you have but come into more of your power!_" Marisalon, exclaimed. "_Would that you could receive proper tuition in your marvellous skills, but, sadly, it is beyond me, as a mere former citizen, to know all that one such as you could do. The root to your own power lies in the City, and I will but humbly remind you to seek passage there as soon as..._" the neomah paused, "_... as soon as I work out a way to get there._"

"Helpful," Louise said out loud, leaning her head out of the porthole, letting the wet mist of the clouds – oh yes, she remembered this well from that long-ago voyage – letting the wetness of the clouds run through her hair.

"_Fair lady, I do try my best,_" the neomah, sounded rather affronted.

More time passed, in silence. The clouds were chill through the girl's fingers, swirling and clinging to them as if they were almost tangible, and as she sat there longer, the only light in the room that which diffused down through the fog that surrounded the airship, she began to reckon that she could hear things. Not the voice of the neomah in her head, no, nor the sounds of the ship around her and the muffled noises of man men trying to make as little noise as possible; no, the sounds were coming from below, from beneath the clouds. Again, she wondered how high above Albion they were, for in the gloom she had seen things that she could have sworn were hills or mountains, just for a moment. Viscount Wardes had said that the captain had most likely indulged in smuggling, and Louise could believe that to be true. To fly like this, wrapped in clouds, unknowing of exactly where Albion was below – though it could be none too far – that took skill, and no doubt practice.

She really wished she had some books. Louise might not have been quite as bookish as her eldest sister, but her family's estate had possessed a large and varied collection, both newer printed ones, and ancient manuscripts protected by Earth magics, and in her childhood – and indeed in the holidays last year – she had tended to gravitate there. At least when Elenore had been off at the university, she had the rooms entirely to herself, and there had always been the hope, the glorious hope, that there would have been a book in there which would have explained properly how to use magic in a way which did not produce useless explosions.

Louise snorted to herself, in an unladylike manner which would have left her mortified if there had been anyone else in the room. Anyone else in the room who wasn't in her skull, at least. She didn't even seem to be able to make the explosions now, although the possession of actual magic, even if it was strange and green-burning, hateful fires of Malfeas, the crippled and pathetic cast-down fallen King, maimed by the hands of righteousness such that... she slapped herself in the forehead, and shook her head, trying to clear the alien mist that clouded her thoughts. Both hands went to her cheeks, and she could feel that they must have been bright red. No, no, no! Why was she thinking that!

"_Thinking what?_" Marisalon asked, hesitantly.

'Nothing!' the girl mentally snapped, twining a lock of hair around a finger. Clearly the tiredness was affecting her more than even she knew, if she was day-dreaming like that, she thought – and in her mind, she knew that honestly, she was merely in denial, for that had not been a daydream, not really. Sitting down on her bed, she crossed her legs, the rough hose somehow chafing less than it should – was her skin getting harder, or was it simply that she accidentally scratched herself with those void-damned brass fingernails so much that she didn't notice minor discomfort?

She took a deep breath, and let it out again. Maybe if she just sat here, in this cold, damp room with the windows open, and _thought_, she could get a grip on her life. What was her current situation? She was on a mission from her friend, to deliver a letter to the Prince Wales of Albion and recover another poorly-chosen letter. There had been other Griffin Knights with them when they set out, but now there was just Wardes, her fiancé, who she had... and he had...

Louise groaned. What she really, really wanted was a priest to talk to. The chaplain back home at their estate, who had been kindly and understanding for a scared girl who was not able to control her magic properly, would have been perfect for that. And that was not what she could have. Mentioning something like "there's a perverted familiar living in my head who tries to get me to commit acts which are sins" was not what a daughter of the de la Vallière should really say to any priest, least of all one who was under the same roof as her mother.

She'd always had her faith to fall back on, even at the hardest times late at night when she prayed to the heavens and could only feel a vast, empty void, sucking at her words and giving nothing back. Why couldn't she have that now? Why didn't God listen? Why didn't God answer her?

Any further thoughts along that path were disrupted, however, by the sharp rap at the door.

"Come in," Louise said, out loud, not turning around from her position at the window.

"My Louise," Wardes said, stepping inside, his hat dripping with condensation, "I came to talk to you about our arrival in New Castle. We are nearing our destination, and the captain estimates from his charts and the compass that, as the crow flies, we are perhaps five miles from being over it. We remain undetected by the Rebel picket line, for I have cloaked us in the mist and we slip past the spells they have cast on the clouds."

The girl half-turned, inclining her head. "That is good news, Viscount," she said softly, even more aware of how close they must be to the enemy forces.

"Yes, it is," the man said, sounding more than a little self-satisfied. "'T'would have been harder had I not told the captain to hold off to ensure Albion would be permitted to rise into these thick clouds. If all goes w–"

And it was at that point that out the window the clouds lit up with actinic white, and thunder boomed, a noise so loud it ceased to be noise and become a physical force. Through the haze of pain, Louise realised that it was indeed the case, her stomach sinking as the ship lurched. Wardes was shouting something, and through the ringing in her ears she forced herself to listen, the Staff of Destruction already clasped in her hands.

"... not the weather... can you taste the magic in the air? That must have been the windstones going up! 'Svoid, it's like sparks on my tongue... lightning cannon?"

"What?" she yelled back. "What are you saying?"

"Lightning cannon!" Lurching into the room, he reached for her, grabbing her arm tight to pull her in close. "Stay with me!" he yelled, exaggerating the words. Clearly, she thought through the mental haze, clutched tight against his chest with the Staff between the two of them, he had experience with this deafness, this ringing in her ears which seemed to fill the whole world. "And close your eyes!"

Wardes barked a single word, and the entire outside wall of the cabin disintegrated. Against her, Louise could feel his chest swell, as he gulped down a breath, and then, mouth moving frantically with unheard words, he began to cast a spell, much longer. The words buzzed at the edge of the girl's deafened hearing, and cold air rushed in like a wave to circle around the mage. The scent of lightning and of chill mornings filled her nostrils, edged with smoke, and she could feel all the hair on the back of her arms stand on end. It was a singularly unpleasant feeling, made worse as the rising feeling moved to her head. Peaking up, she could see her fiancé's hair beard and hair stand on end, too, until he was making a passable impersonation of a dandelion.

And then he spoke the last word, and Louise's world was suddenly filled with blinding white, a harsh white-blue actinic glare that painted the world red even when her eyes reflexively screwed shut.

A thunderous clash sounded, and there were cobbled stones under her feet. Wardes stumbled and sagged, so that his full weight was on her. Blinking flash-blinded eyes, the girl tried to peer around, but there only seemed to be grey and blurs around her.

"_What was that?_" Marisalon asked, a mixture of concern and fascination filling her voice.

"Shh," Louise muttered out loud, straining to hold the viscount up. Rubbing her face against his jacket, she tried to clear the tears from her eyes, and slowly the world came back into focus. Though grey mists and fog still swirled around her, it appeared that they were actually present, rather than being some symptom of the bright light. The orange fires of torches and braziers gave a warmth to the area that other places had been lacking, and in that warm, Louise could see what looked like armoured figures in silver and crimson. She let the weight of Wardes sag down to the ground, and clutched the Staff tight.

One of the figures shouted something at her in a strange language. It took Louise moments, shaking her head to try to clear it, to match the words to the tone. Or, rather, not match the words, but match the mumbly glottal phrasings, the harsh consonants of the peasantry intruding on a Brimiric language, the almost-understanding in her mind, which knew both High and Low Tristainian.

It could only be Albionese. And since they were wearing the red of the crown, with the regal insignia on them... she lowered her glaive, so it did not look like she was holding it in an aggressive position.

"I am sorry," Louise shouted back in her native tongue, "but I don't speak your language! We are friends, ambassadors from Tristain!" She paused, and switched to Romalian, the shared language of the Brimiric Nations, and ignored the wobble of guilt in the back of her mind which reminded her that she should have tried harder at it with her tutors. "Sorry, sorry," she tried again, "but I am not able to speak Albionese. Friends! Friends!"

Well. At least that seemed to get the soldiers to lower their guns and wands somewhat.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The royal soldiers still threw them into the cells, although in respect to their claims they were thrown in gently. The detention was not so gentle that they were permitted to keep their wands, however. Louise tried to moderate the nagging sensation in her head – which did not come from Marisalon – that she should be slaughtering them all for the effrontery of taking her glaive away and worse believing that it would stop her, and instead focussed on Viscount Wardes. The man was pale, his breaths shallow, and his skin was cool to the touch.

The girl sniffed. "You idiot," she whispered, softly. "You just had to go tire y-yourself on... on the earth dragon, so you were more tired by those Dragonblooded, so you collapse after this." She rested the back of her hand against his forehead. "I... I know that was square magic, b-but you shouldn't be out like this." The girl pulled herself to her feet, and with a scraping noise dragged the metal brazier in the cell along, until it was next to the bed where he lay. "Y-you're meant to be almost as powerful as Mother! That shouldn't be leaving you like C... like this."

"_What's the matter with him?_" Marisalon asked cautiously. "_What did he do? We were on the ship, and then we were down here, and... he's not dying, is he?_"

'No,' thought Louise, shaking her head as she held his hand. He was limp, his legs twitching slightly as if he was walking. She wondered what he was dreaming of. 'Well, I really hope not. He's... he's just exhausted himself. When y-you push yourself beyond what you can do, or use too much magic too quickly... Founder, yes, he was helping the ship, controlling the winds, and hiding it from other eyes, too.' She slumped forward, wanting to slap him for being a damnable fool. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" she said out loud. "You didn't need to be doing all of that yourself!"

"_I do hope he gets better. He is handsome, and you do love him._"

"Yes," she said, balling her fists up. The girl looked around the cell, made to hold tens of men. Solid iron bars which each had a marker-rune at the top which burned red made up one wall, and the others were solid stone.

She could get out of here. She was almost certain of it. She could stand up and walk through the walls, and be free and loose. But she couldn't take Viscount Wardes with her, and she certainly couldn't leave him here in this state.

Of course, the fact that they were in Royalist custody, and thus approximately where they wanted to be – although their target destination had really been on the other side of the bars – was also a reason that an escape was not possible yet. Louise looked around. It was rather insulting that the Royalists did not even feel that they had to watch them all the time. There wasn't even a jailer positioned outside the room, peering at them with beady eyes, and whatever else that sort of commoner did – most narratives she had read were rather unclear on their actual duties, beyond being an annoying-yet-evadable threat to falsely imprisoned nobles.

"Hello!" she called out, in case there was someone lurking out of sight around the corner or something. "My companion, Viscount Jean-Jacques de Wardes of Vajours, Knight-Captain of the Griffon Knights, is sick! Bring blankets and hot water!"

There was a pause, and no response.

"Do so immediately!" she ordered to the empty air, imperiously commanding an imagined lice-ridden filth-covered jailer on the other side of the bars. "Or else I will be very displeased!"

Still no activity occurred.

"So much for Albionese hospitality and good grace," Louise shouted, slumping back down and viciously twirling one strand of hair around her finger until it was noose-tight. Her fists balled. "Uncouth ill-bred peasants!" The girl slumped back down on the stool by the bed, warming her hands on the brazier, as she thought.

Again she leant over Wardes, listening to his breathing, in and out. Despite his clammy skin and undue paleness, she could not deny that he still had an innate grace and nobility about his expression. Nor did she wish to deny such things, she thought, as she rested her hand on his forehead. Somehow, he had, after all, performed some grand square-rank magic to save them both – and her expression hardened, as she let herself think about the inevitable fate of the crew of the ship, if even he had felt the need to retreat rather than save the ship. Lightning cannons, the grey-haired man had called out. Yes, Louise had heard that the Albionese did strange things with windstones to release the energy within as lightning.

Well, that meant all those deaths were on their heads. The pink-haired girl squared her jaw. Yes. Those treacherous rebels would pay. A glimmer caught her eye, a golden chain around her fiancé's neck revealed by the shifting of his sweat-drenched shirt.

"_What do you think that is?_" Marisalon asked, curiosity evident in her voice. "_Clearly you should take a look. You know, fair lady, while you are loosening his shirt so he can breathe more easily._"

Louise pursed her lips. 'I really shouldn't intrude like that,' she thought, leaning forwards to feel the pulse on his neck. It was strong, and didn't feel abnormally fast or slow; indeed, she checked her own neck with her other hand, and his pulse was slower than hers, but not so slow that she should feel concerned. No doubt it was a sign of how good his physical condition was; Cattleya's heart was always all a-flutter when she overdid things.

The girl straightened up, pulling her hands back to her lap and smoothing down the rough clothes she was wearing. Oh, how she missed a proper noblewoman's skirt, rather than this coarse sailor-boy's borrowed garbs. But that did remind her. She should be praying for him; after all, it was a fact well-established by the Church that prayers to God and faith in general aided the sick, and those suffering from exhaustion due to magic more than most. After all, that meant that they were nobles, and the nobility were the chosen of the Lord. Did it not make perfect sense that he would therefore favour prayer for them over prayers for peasants?

But... in the ruined church in that village, Puy-de-Lac, she had got an answer to her prayer. The fire had burned green. That... that was more than she'd ever got for any of her prayers for Cattleya, no matter how hard she'd clasped her hands together and prayed desperately every night. Would it help Wardes wake up sooner, feel better if she asked the King, Malfeas, to help her fiancé, she thought, blushing red.

She really shouldn't. One should never worship anything apart from the Lord. Even prayers to the saints and the holy aspects of God were merely to intermediaries and parts of the divine whole – for that was the fate of saints, to become one with the Most High.

"_It could help him,_" Marisalon pointed out, the voice in her head gentle and suggestive. "_My beautiful lady, surely your god is kind, yes? What manner of benevolent god could possibly object to a prayer to the rightful King of Creation... not least when it is done to help a loved one, yes?_" The neomah paused. "_You do love him, and are doing it to help... and the Great Emperor has already helped you so much that he will clearly be willing to provide more aid, my lady._"

Struck by inner conflict, Louise clasped her hands to her chest, the pressure stiff and rather crumbled presence of the letter from Henrietta reminding her of the mission. Biting her lip, she screwed her eyes shut. "Our Lord in Heaven," she whispered to herself, "who is with us in all things. Bless the fire, the water, the wind and the earth, and bring them together in harmony. Bless the void, which is all things, and by its domain all things continue. I ask of you, please... please, in the name of Brimir, who saved men from the tyranny of the elves and who delivered us from evil, please send your blessings to aid your faithful servant, Jean-Jacques de Wardes. And..." her voice choked for a moment, years of belief welling up within her, "... and Malfeas, K-King of Kings, I ask of you, please aid him too. S-send but a fraction of your might to help my fiancé." Clasping her hands together, she hardly noticed when her brazen nails scratched the back of her hands, nicking the flesh. "For yours is the power and the will, King of Creation, Great Emperor." She licked her lips. "Lord God, Great Emperor, please, I _beg _of you," she managed, trying to keep her voice to a whisper. "And please, lay your blessings on this... this horrible, terrible mission, and let us avenge ourselves upon the traitors of Albion."

For a moment the brazier flared green, devouring coals and the iron glowing red hot. Heat washed over Louise like a wave, a heat that smelt of hot metal and strange acrid fumes, before the green fires died down again, leaving only smouldering coals in a bed of white ash.

Fanning herself with one hand, the girl went to gnaw on a nail, only to stop just in time before she could manage to slice her tongue open on sharp metal. It was... alarming... in its own way to get a response to one's prayers. Very alarming. And yet just a little bit _wonderful_. She tried to tell herself that her flush was just because of the wave of heat, but she was lying to herself, and knew it even without the neomah in her head making perverted comments. Something, someone powerful and... and _wonderful _was listening to her. Was listening to _her_. That was not something that Kirche could say, even with her cow-like Germanian udders and way with small-minded males who ignored the Church's teachings! Hah!

Footsteps sounded in the hall outside, echoing as unseen people descended the spiral staircase, and Louise looked slightly guiltily at the still-slightly-glowing brazier. Hopefully the newcomers wouldn't look too closely at the iron before it had cooled back down to its previous black. She went to dry her forehead against her sleeve, only to remember that she no longer sweated... and that reminded her of the fact that she was a _mess_, wearing the clothes of a commoner and without a proper bath or hairwash since the hotel in La Rochelle. She no doubt smelt of smoke and the sweat of other people; she could only hope that the odour of blackpowder and blood was not present too.

"_You will do most wonderfully, my lady_," Marisalon reassured her. "_Just rely on your natural beauty, and the confidence and certainty that comes as your rightful status as one of the beloved princesses of the green sun. Be sure, be certain, and remember, you are on a mission from your most deliciously beautiful princess, yes?_"

The girl nodded, and squared her jaw. Yes! The neomah was right. She just had to be confident and ignore the fact that she was in jail and wearing commoner clothing and probably smelt and and... confidence! Arrogance! How dare these inbred Albionese on their miserable foggy wet island throw her in jail and insult her when she was an ambassador! That was the way to think! Especially when she was the daughter of the Duke de la Vallière and Karin of the Heavy Wind!

The first man down the stairs, a blond in a soot-stained but once-fine linen shirt, paused as he glanced into the cell. The female prisoner, despite her diminutive stature and non-threatening build, was glaring at him with remarkable ferocity; a ferocity which only intensified when he put on a wide, non-threatening smile. The male prisoner seemed to still be unconscious, and he nodded, stepping off the stairs followed by two men carrying bayoneted muskets, and a third with a heavy truncheon.

Louise, for her part, took in the wand-sword at the newcomer's waist and the complicated armoured-glove contraption on his left hand which had what could only be windstones mounted on the knuckles. He was smiling at her! How dare he! She certainly wasn't going to let that sway her, and she had to remember that with as much certainty as she could because it was a rather attractive smile. The man looked to be in his early twenties, with pale skin – which looked somewhat sunburnt – and delicate, almost effeminate features. The set of his body, though, with broad shoulders that spoke of extensive blade training, and a slightly stocky waist denied any accusations of a lack of masculinity. She was fairly sure this was the Prince Wales; he looked familiar, but she was not entirely sure. There had been rather a lot of Albionese nobles at those parties years ago, and they had all tended to be pale and blonde and tall, in the same way the Gallian royals were all anaemic, blue-haired and diminutive.

"This is the prisoner?" the man said in something which sounded a lot like Old Tristainian to the others following him. There was a patter of guttural Albionese between one of the musketeers and the man with the truncheon, before the musketeer responded in the same language.

"Yes, sire. The man and the woman-child, alike. Both nobles, by the colour of their hair and their features."

"Good, good." With confident steps he made his way to the bars of the cell, all the way under the gaze of Louise. The little bit of her head which seemed to be blossoming in the arts of violence suggested that she grab him through the bars and hold him prisoner, but she ignored it. And not just because he was wise enough to stand more than an arm's reach away from them.

The man paced before her, eying her up. She stared back at him, wrapped in her mental armour of noble dignity. "Well," he said, in flawless High Tristainian, staring into her eyes where he was no doubt looking for recognition of the language, "two prisoners who claim to be Tristainian. What do we have here?"

Louise's eyes sparked green, as her gaze flicked over the man, taking in his shirt, his sword, and his build. Taking a deep breath, she puffed up her chest, and glared at him with all the noble-born pride she could draw upon. "You're a triangle-rank wind mage," she said with a hint of accusation in her voice. "And given you are a Royalist, that means you are senior, because I am quite aware that the Albionse monarchy gives nobles field ranks based on their raw magical talent. You may be the Prince Wales, you may be one of his senior officers, but either way, I am an ambassador from Tristain sent on behalf of Princess Henrietta, and I _demand_..." she gulped for breath, running on verbal momentum, "... and I _demand _more respect than this from the House of Stewart, who have previously always been good friends to Tristain." She tucked her hands behind her back, interlocking her fingers to prevent her hands from balling into fists and injuring herself with her nails.

The blond man chuckled, but she was sure that there was an edge of tension in his eyes, something like...

"_Oh my fair lady, that hit home. Just look at how much stress he is under! Most exquisite!_"

... yes, that. Louise tried to maintain her air of tranquil and serene nobility, and not to start smirking like one of her older sister's cats.

Nevertheless, the man tried to counterattack. "You are the ones in the cell, because you appeared in a flash of lightning in the middle of this castle courtyard, when we are surrounded by traitors. I don't believe you are in a position to demand anything."

"You may not believe so," Louise snapped back, clenching her hands behind her even harder as she tried not to let her expression change, "but you would be wrong. I have been trusted with this task by Princess Henrietta of Tristain, and I demand to see the Prince Wales!" She paused for breath, and pulled out the by-now highly crumpled, but still sealed letter that the Princess had given her. "This is personally for him, and has her seal on it!"

Every bit of the man's posture changed. "I am the Prince Wales," he said, and from the crystalline noise in her head Louise knew he was telling the truth. The man inclined his head. "Yes, I am Cearl, the Prince Wales, heir to the House of Stewart, zha-chieftan to the Oruki, and Blade of the Faith." He gave a bitter laugh. "Not that this means much, what with how things are going," he said with his lips twisted into an ironic smirk, gesturing around with a bandaged hand. "I am also the Grand Admiral of the Royal Fleet of Albion, the master of the skies, which would be impressive were it not for the fact that the Royal Fleet of Albion consists of a grand total of one ship, and in truth, the three dragoons we have left are an asset comparable to that vessel." He shook his head sadly. "Let me see that letter."

The girl squared her jaw, and warily advanced, ready to jump back or snatch the letter back; a caution which only increased as the Prince removed the armoured glove-contraption from his hand. "I don't bite," he said, with a wider smile. "Please, I just want to test it. You can keep hold of it; just let me see the seal."

Louise advanced, holding the letter such that the marking on the back could be seen. The prince extended his left arm through the bars, and pressed his ruby ring into the waxen marking on the back. At the slightest touch, both it and the seal flared, an intense flash of multicoloured light that painted the walls in rainbow tones, and left Louise blinking sunspots out of her eyes from the second time today.

"This," the Prince Wales said, raising his hand, "is the ruby of wind, one of the holy relics of the Albionese royal family. And from the way that seal reacted, the impression on it was made by the ruby of water, which I know for a very certain fact is in the possession of Princess Henrietta de Tristain. Just as together, wind and water make the rainbow, so do those rings know the other."

"Im-impressive," managed Louise. The noble-born inertia she had been running off seemed to have faded, and now, face to face with the man who was incontrovertibly the one she had been sent to meet, the Prince Wales of Albion, she seemed tongue-tied. "Um."

"Mmm," the man said kindly to her, before turning. "Johnson," he snapped, in the same older Brimiric dialect he had used before, "Have the jailer open the door, and have the man taken to the infirmary. The girl will come with me; we will not require an escort."

"There is no need for that," Wardes interrupted, weakly, in the same dialect. Louise flinched at that; she had not noticed that he was awake. "It's just fatigue from magic; I just need to rest. A healer won't do me any good."

"I respect your opinion, but I disagree," the Prince Wales said, firmly. "You'll be feeling sick and chill; a healer will get rid of the symptoms, and can give you a touch more strength. Johnson," he said, turning again, "have the man helped up. And get that door open!"

* * *

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* * *

Up the long staircase, Cearl, the Prince Wales climbed, trailed by the pink-haired girl. Inside, his heart was in turmoil, confusion and unease roiling and boiling at this latest piece of news. Outside, he tried to remain calm, in front of this foreigner. He made his way through the corridors of the castle, the wide windows installed in times of peace now covered up by earth mages. Refreshed wardings glittered out of the corner of his eyes, and alarm spells snaked their way in edge-of-vision blue across the ceilings.

The man shook his head sadly as he unlocked his door, whispering the word to it as he turned the key. All this readiness, and it would do them little good. They lacked the men, the commoner infantry to win this. There were three hundred nobles in this castle, a terrifying concentration of magical force... and fewer commoners. The Lord Chamberlain had mentioned that some of the lowerborn nobles were getting more than a little surly with his father's orders that they serve and take roles that should have been filled by commoners, which was aggravating. Didn't they understand the gravity of the situation?

The room of the Prince Wales was plain, almost austere. It was little larger than a cabin on a ship, and located within the bowels of the castle lacking a window entirely, although a somewhat morbid painting of a battle occupied most of one wall. The picture looked like it belonged in some grand echoing hallway, not this cramped single room. A bed, a desk and two chains, a side table overloaded with heavily bookmarked texts; these were the luxuries that the last prince of Albion permitted himself. He hated to close the door behind him, for the room was slightly musty from disuse, but he did not wish for others to hear this conversation. He offered a chair to the girl in the commoner's clothes, and sat on the bed himself, his chin propped on his hands as he stared at her.

"I know you," he said, after a moment's pause. "You were that girl who hung around Ann; a little younger, yes? One of the de la Vallière daughters, yes?"

"Yes. But...Ann?" the girl asked.

Cearl paused, working his mouth slightly. "Princess Henrietta. She gave me permission to call her that," he said, after a moment's thought. One of the girl's pink-blonde eyebrows fluted upwards, and he hastily went to change the topic. "How did you get here? By which I mean, what was the series of events that led you to arrive in the Plantagé Courtyard?"

The Prince Wales listened to her tale, of an entire squad of Griffin Knights sent to aid the loyal subjects of Albion whittled down by first duty and then sudden attack – attack that he might have thought was those treacherous Grenadier Guard, save she was adamant that they were not. To hear that the ship, which would have been carrying saltpetre and sulphur, had been hit so close to New Castle, close enough that the Captain of the Griffin Knights could use lightning magic to bring her and him into the courtyard, was heartbreaking. They desperately could have used it for their guns.

But he also listened to what she was not saying, and was watching her. She knew rather more about the attackers down in La Rochelle than she let on. There was an air about her, which he could not truly put a name to, an arrogance, a force of will that seemed not quite appropriate. That was it. She was too confident, too ready for a mage taken from their wand – and that she carried one of the relics stored in the Academy of Magic, one of the famed wand-glaives was odd enough. But there was a way that she sat, a way that she held herself.

The Prince Wales flicked his eyes down to her hands, to those peculiarly painted nails, and back up to those slightly too wide, slightly too dark eyes. Yes. She sat like she had a wand in her hand, a weapon half-drawn. And yet he could see none. "Mmm," he said, out loud, gesturing at her to continue. There was something _off _about her, something subtle, and perhaps more wrong in its subtlety.

And then the gears in his head began to move, pieces clicking together. Karin of the Heavy Wind was said to be the Duchess de la Vallière, and this girl, this half-grown woman bore the Duchess' features quite strongly. Karin of the Rule of Steel, Karin Fleet-Killer, the mailed fist of the crown of Tristain until her retirement. And the Duke... well, he had his own military repute, as a man more dangerous for his grasp of strategy than for the fact that he was a square-class water mage. This girl carried a wand-glaive, the weapon of a lancer. Henrietta, his beloved Ann had sent her, and had entrusted her personally with the letter. She had not trusted the Viscount de Wardes, for all that he was the knight-captain of the Griffon Knights. And Ann was young, slightly naive, but she was no fool, and had a sharpened blade hidden within her soul that he wasn't sure that even she knew about.

This girl was dangerous, most likely trained as a killer by her mother, a youngest daughter loyal to the Crown. And that... well. "Interesting," he said, eventually. "May I have my letter, please."

Louise passed the crumpled letter to the blond man and curtseyed before sitting down, feeling rather self-conscious and trying to suppress it. She really wasn't meant to be in a man's bedroom, and even if she had done _things _with Viscount Wardes, that didn't mean she shouldn't still attempt to compose herself as a proper Tristainian maiden should. Even if she no longer technically met the criteria to be one. And...

"_Fairest lady,_" Marisalon interrupted, "_please, perhaps it would be best to consider such things another time. Watch his face as he reads it, and watch him as he watched you._"

'He was watching me?'

"_Oh yes, most acutely. And as exciting and vivacious and as beautiful you are, my lady, I suspect he was after something else from you than the pure joy of your company._"

Sitting back, Louise narrowed her eyes slightly as she watched Cearl read the letter. Was that moisture at the corners of his eyes as he reached the bottom, raising it to his lips to gently kiss the signature? "I... had suspected that she would be marrying," he said, after a pause. "To see my beloved cousin in the hands of that Germanian _pig_, a product of a degenerate people who rule by force of arms rather than any righteousness, to know that the Tristainian line will be tainted by their blood... it was sickening enough that my father married one of my sisters to those degenerates to secure funding for this war. This..." he said, cold disgust dripping from his voice, "well, at least I will not live to see that marriage."

"Will not live..." Louise began. "Your highness, are you injured?"

The man shook his head, nostrils still flared. "No. But I..." he took a deep breath, "I have been commanding our one ship left for these past few weeks, flying a false flag. It is not honest, but it is necessary. And yesterday, we hit a desbattionarian courier..."

"A... a what?" Louise asked.

Cearl raised his eyebrows. "A courier of the Desbattion, the uppity body of nobles my father permitted to exist and which he had been clearly too lax with. They are the ones who provide that uppity cleric Cromwell with his funding, and who back this treacherous rebellion." His eyes flicked idly over the letter again, but his mind was clearly somewhere else. "My father... has made several bad decisions," he admitted to Louise, his jaw twisting as if it pained him. "Those disputes with Gallia over the holdings which are rightfully ours in the Great North Sea and the taxes needed to pay for that, the renovations of the capital, the way he publicly removed the Duke of Saxe-Gotha for his deeds and how it became a rallying cry for those with desbattionarian sympathies."

"Oh?" Louise asked, curiously. "What did the Duke do?"

The Prince Wales blushed slightly. "I'd rather not say, not in front of a young lady like yourself." He made a disgusted noise. "Suffice to say, he was unfit to be counted among our subjects... and then we found evidence of dark trades hidden within his cellars, and worship of false gods! They claimed we had done so under false premises!" He raised one hand. "There is, true, some reason for complaint, but they took liberties with the Crown's mercy, and then... well, they went too far. For them to refuse to stand down the Desbattion when ordered... well that was treason. It was also, sadly, persuasive treason, because they had the money and so were able, somehow – which I find most suspicious," he added darkly, "to talk even the most loyal men into joining them. Even the Oruki broke their ancient oaths with barely a thought."

The neomah in Louise's head began to snigger. "_Oh fairest lady, most amusing. He sounds __precisely like a citizen of the First Circle who does not comprehend why he has been outwitted and outmanoeuvred. It's a wonderful sound, like the finest melody, especially the bit which comes next, which is when you have them at your mercy. That's the point when they're subjugated and humiliated, dealing with someone they looked down on as a mere neomah, an uppity whore to use in their own ploys and discard ..._"

'Shut up. I'm trying to listen to him,' Louise mentally hissed.

"_... and then the serenity as you recall the true law of the Endless Desert and that is that you are strong and they are weak, and you can do whatever you wish._"

'I said shut up!'

Shifting on his bed, the prince misread the discomfort in Louise's eyes. "Yes, I know! Such ingratitude! Well. Things are going to get worse, I am afraid. Because on the desbattionarian courier, we found a copy of the orders they were conveying to the army outside, and through previous good luck we broke the cipher they use on such things. It reaffirmed the previous orders to attack and take the castle. They're planning to attack the day after tomorrow at sunrise, I am afraid. Well, we returned back as soon as we could – we have a secret dock hidden under Albion, you see, and we will evacuate all the remaining women and children tomorrow, and any men who are cowardly enough to flee."

"You intend to stay and die," Louise said. It was not a question.

The man inclined his head, running a hand through his blond hair, before standing and recovering a strongbox from a drawer on his desk. "I do. I am a prince of Albion, the last man in the line of Stewart, and I will not dishonour my forefathers by fleeing." He paused. "My youngest sister is here, though, and though she is but nine, she knows her duty. She will be leaving on the last ship, to friends we have in Tristain, and from there she can be taken to my sister, who is married to one of the Germanian Elector-Khans." Sadly, he shook his head. "It is not the fate that should be hers, but it is all we can do for her. She could still be queen some day if she could be found a husband of the line of Brimir." Opening the strongbox, he recovered another wrinkled, clearly much-read letter, passing it along with the one she had just delivered to Louise. "Take this back to A... to the princess, please. She requests its return." He smiled. "Please do not read it, and should it look like you will be captured, destroy them both rather than let them fall into enemy hands."

Louise smoothed down her breeches, and blinked heavily. "Your highness," she said, "you know... you know Princess Henrietta loves you."

There was a look of ancient pain in the pale-skinned man's eyes. "She is young, and there will be other loves. And I would not be the man she loves, I would not be the man I am in the eyes of God, if I fled to cower under her skirts and bought trouble to her and Tristain. So I will fulfil my duty so she might fulfil hers." The Prince Wales squared his jaw. "We are brave and righteous, and we fight in the name of the true order of things. Among our number, we have more nobles than we do line infantry; the Founder Brimir will smile upon us. By my reckoning, we will take ten of their heads for every one of ours that they claim, and that will be if we do poorly. They may have fled from me at Kineton, but here they must attack us, and here they will face the last song of Albion, and I say to you, here they will know the fury of a trapped lion!"

* * *

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* * *

"... but the Royalists are fools," Lord Fairfax said, dark eyes gleaming above his trimmed beard and moustache. The Republican general paced up and down within his command tent, set up in the square before New Castle Cathedral in the captured town surrounding the last stronghold of the Royalists. "Though they will try to evacuate their women and children, their _brave _men will stay, as to make our victory as dear as possible." He stroked his beard, staring down at the map before him, a portion of the floor extruded and reshaped by earth mages to be a three-dimensional replica of the world outside the tent. "Well. It doesn't matter. I have no intention of feeding my men into their meatgrinder. New Castle will fall whether or not the next offensive succeeds, though it may take me a year. God smiles upon the well-prepared and well-armed, and we, Philip, are both, while they are neither. They are rats, and they will die like rats."

"They will try to choke us... there... there... and there," Sir Philip Skippon commander of the foot infantry said, aiming at points on the map with his cane. "I remain concerned that they have more men in there than our intelligence counts."

"Indeed; I share your concerns, old friend. Still, as it is, we have the Royalists penned in. And the longer we wait, the more guns we can bring up... and the more dragonsteeth. If needs be, I will level the place to the ground. Would that they were lower on blackpowder, though, and that we had not used so many dragonsteeth on Nottingham."

"Yes, that was a crying shame, but those damn'd mages were in the caves. Better that, and kill them then and there, than letting them regroup to tunnel out. Would you rather be facing those fifty nobles and two thousand foot in New Castle now? No, I was glad to see them dead, and gladder still to see those traitors to Mother Albion dragged before the Desbattion, " Sir Skippon said, gripping his cane as if he would smash the model castle himself and so bring down the walls for real. "And now the Prince Wales has returned to his hidey-hole, every last royal rat is in there." He paused. "_That _woman assures us she can take down the walls, but I would rather not risk reliance on her myself," he added, morbidly.

"Ha! Yes, when you..."

"My lord-general?" an adjunct announced, poking his head inside the tent. Night had fallen outside, and the chill was noticeable. "Captain Thompson, of the First Grenadiers, has returned, to give his report."

"Ah, good. Show him in."

Captain Thompson was a slight man, balding despite the fact that he looked to still be in his third decade, his beard daintily trimmed. A buff jacket more suited for the common infantry than a man of his stature was fully-fastened up, though he wore no breastplate, and there were singes on the thick cloth that looked like a sign of enemy action. "My lord," he said, quietly, "thank you for seeing me."

Lord Fairfax nodded. "Report on the status of the Grenadier Guard."

"The First are in position. Two companies have been loaded aboard the ships, as you commanded, while the third company has been positioned around the basement area of the Hound and Doves. I took the liberty of tweaking the position slightly, after that damnable ship came crashing down nearly on top of that position. Loaded with saltpetre, too; I've tasked the quartermasters with offloading it and adding it to our supplies. Shouldn't wave off a gift from God like that one, eh?"

The general waved that off. "Good, good. How're the..." and he paused "men."

"I would say that they are bright-eyed and willing to do their duty for the Holy Republic of Albion, sir," Captain Thompson said, with a mild note of reproach in his voice. "I would also like to request that Third Company have an additional resupply cart of windstones moved up. Lord Protector Cromwell issued those commands, my lord, but it would appear that – no doubt due to administrative error – we are one cart short of windstones. And though Founder strike me down if I do cheek you, sir, but the consequences of a shortage are..."

"I'll see to it," Sir Skippon said, interrupting. "He's right, you know, though," he shifted his gaze to the captain again, "... warn your men to be less profligate with them. I know there's always going to be some use, but those windstones could run another supply ship."

"I am aware of that, sir," the balding man said. "Moreover," he smashed his fist against his buff jacket, with a somewhat muffled noise that would have sounded better had he been wearing armour, "I am pleased to announce that Lady Sheffield, from the Lord Protector's office, is with the first and second companies right now, making some adjustments to their armaments. Hush hush replacement parts from Londinium," he dropped his voice, "... apparently they've improved the durability of the actinic rods threefold, or so she assures me."

"... threefold," Sir Skippon exhaled. "I am impressed." He exchanged a glance with Lord Fairfax, before he nodded, solidly. "And... they are on the ships already?"

"Oh, yes sir! They're ready... ready and willing, sir, for the glory of the Holy Republic, in the name of Founder Brimir!"

Lord Fairfax's dark eyes glittered. "For the Republic," he said. "One way or another, by day or night I will have the Prince Wales' neck to present to the Desbattion. If only that braying fool knew the best way to thwart me would be to take his own life."

Captain Thompson looked shocked at the suggestion. "Well, he will burn forever if he did that!" he said, eyes widening. "That cur is the last prince of that family of degenerates, but... would he really be that much of a sinner?"

The lord-general rolled his eyes. "Either way, I would rather avoid being raked over the coals myself," he said. "I want that man alive, I want as many royals as possible alive, and I want you, captain, to make sure all of your command are quite aware that I will have their heads if they can't control themselves. And the same goes for any man under my control. Those orders come from Lord Protector Cromwell and the Desbattion, and I will not fail them!"

* * *

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	13. 12: Louise Eclipsed

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 12: Louise Eclipsed**

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* * *

The court of King Jacomus I of Albion was sadly diminished from whatever glories it may have once held. Louise, clad in a hastily borrowed dress the Prince Wales had found for her, could see that. Whatever may have been done to clean the velvet and polish the woodwork in this grand hall had been incomplete, and there were still drag marks on the stone. The refined eye of the noble girl took all of this in, and drew its conclusions; this was a house down upon its luck. It reminded her of a few of the estates she had visited with her mother who had lost all their sons to various conflicts. The memories which had stayed with her were of men with lilacs tucked into their pockets and women with purple mourning veils.

And yet there was joviality here. The men laughed, and flirted with the younger women; the musicians played jaunty militaristic music rather than funereal dirges. The tables were laden with food – indeed, they were overstuffed – and the drink was already flowing. The Viscount Wardes was sat at one of the higher tables, and he looked to be fairing rather better.

"See," Cearl, the Prince Wales, said beside her, noticing where she was looking. "I have heard of Wardes of the Lightning, but I had not met him before, and I did not think he would be so stubborn – and, I think unwilling to show weakness – as that. Though, perchance, it may be something to do with his youth and the speed at which he attained the rank of square mage. That is always said to be very much a product of the will, and perhaps such men –and women – will always be rather hard to handle."

Louise nodded her head. Yes, that would fit with what she knew, and with her mother. She distinctly got the sensation that Marisalon was not saying anything, but ignored the unspoken insolence of the neomah.

"Ah, your highness," said an elderly man in a blue mantle, an amber-coloured monocle resting in his eye. "You are back.

"Who is this?" Louise asked the prince, in Romalian.

The white-haired man squinted at Louise through rheumy eyes. "I am the Earl of Dornsaet, the Lord Chamberlain of this royal household," he said, in the same formal old Brimiric – very similar to modern Romalian – that seemed to be used here. "My prince, have you... mmhm... have you resolved the troublesome issue of the intruders in the castle?"

"Your grace," Louise responded in the same language, curtseying. Her Romalian was accented, but she was passable in it; it was the shared language of the clergy and the highest of nobility, and so it behoved her to be able to speak it for formal circumstances such as this. "Much it shames me to admit it, through some..." she paused, searching for the word, before settling for, "lack of understanding, I and my fiancé, Viscount Wardes of Vajours, are the intruders. We are..." she paused. Founder damn it, she knew the word for ambassador, it was one of the important ones, so why couldn't she remember it? "We are friends from Tristain, intended to be here for the assistance of you, but our ship and us were attacked by the bad soldiers twice already, so there are only two of us here when there should have been more and a ship."

"_Dear lady,_" Marisalon muttered, "_from what I understood of your chain of thought, you are perhaps not as conversant in that language as you think you are._"

Louise's eyes widened, and she had to resist the urge to smirk. So Marisalon couldn't understand Romalian? Interesting. Very, very interesting. A way to think without having her perverted head-familiar listen in. That had _possibilities_, and rather a lot of them...

"_I can understand that; you thought that in your native language,_" the neomah said acerbically.

"Such misfortune, such shame!" the Earl exclaimed in complete ignorance of what was happening in the head of the girl. "More men would have been a grace of Lord and Founder alike, and another ship would have been a blessing beyond compare." He turned to Wales. "Your highness, your father welcomes you back, and your sister will be glad to see you."

"Thank you, Chamberlain," Cearl said, a hint of melancholy drifting onto his expression as he followed the old man. "As you were." There were cheers at the prince's appearance, cheers of celebration in the name of Albion, and he casually waved them off, a smile on his face which Louise could not help but feel was rather rigid.

"Yes, your highness," the old man replied, as the two of them made their way further into the hall.

* * *

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* * *

From the high table, beside the royals, Louise watched the last ball of Albion. The last of the sunlight streamed through the windows, painted red by the smoke in the air, and the music played on. Viscount Wardes was to her left, the Prince Wales to her right, and she suspected that there might have been the slightest hint of a snub to her fiancé that the prince would choose to sit beside her rather than him.

"_My fair lady, do not underestimate your own charms,_" Marisalon said with a wicked smirk implicit in her voice. "_Not least, you have done a great service for both him and your princess, yes, conveying these letters._"

That was true, the girl had to admit. Wardes was talking to her, but she was not truly paying attention. Instead, her eyes were flicking from dancer to dancer, green-glowing embers in her eyes flickering as she truly paid attention to each one. For all the Prince Wales' talk of their number of mages – and indeed they were many – they were not strong. Almost none in here were above line-class, and there were plenty of what could only be _inexprimé_, devoid of magic yet dressed as nobles. The Albionese bloodlines were said to be weak, diluted, and now she had her proof. By her reckoning, all their capable mages must have been on the walls already, and that she knew enough to be concerned by. A dot mage might kill a man, and a line a cluster of men, but it took triangle mages to kill formations and square to wipe out a company. She had heard some of what Viscount Wardes had achieved in those border clashes in the south with Germanian bandit lords, but not only was he exhausted already, he was not Albionese. For him to act here in such a way would be an act of war on behalf of Tristain, for as the knight-captain of the Griffin Knights he was an agent of state policy.

Louise blinked. She never normally thought that clearly about that sort of thing. And that did not sound much like how she normally thought. She shivered then, in her borrowed silk dress, checking her hands and glancing around the room for any alien intrusion into what she could see. There appeared to be nothing. She sipped at her soup, a mildly spiced dish with honeyed apple, and tried not to think about how many people in this room would be dead in a few days hence.

The next time she looked up, the Prince Wales was staring at her. And at her forehead. "Your highness?" she asked, subtly tilting her spoon so she could see her own reflection in it. It appeared to be devoid of burning crossed swords. Good.

"My lady de La Vallière, there is something that I believe I will ask of you," he said softly, "a favour, if you will. Do not worry; it should not put you at any risk."

"Your highness?" she asked.

"You see on the far side of my father?" he asked, as a new movement began from the musicians. "My sister, Sophia."

There was a little girl, even younger than herself though tall for her age, sitting at the high table at the left hand of the King who sat slumped in a high-backed chair. Age radiated off him, the years having scarred uncounted wrinkles into his skin – such that he looked even older than Old Osmond, the headmaster, who was well into his second century – and his robes and crown looked too big and too heavy for him. By contrast, the young girl was like a blossoming flower compared to the gnarled oak beside her. Her fine, straight hair was white-blonde, and her eyes were the same surprisingly dark blue as Cearl's.

"Yes, we have the same mother, a Gallian princess," the Prince Wales said, in response to her comparing glance. "She died giving birth to Sophia; we do not take after her, apart from the eyes. My father apparently looked rather a lot like me when he was younger, although even I find that hard to believe. It is somewhat hard to believe he was ever young." His voice dropped. "Some of the... ill-consequential decisions he has made might be said to be due to the fact that he was born in 504, and he has outlived four Prince Wales'. And what I would ask you to do is to ensure that she gets safely to Tristain. The royal blood runs just as strongly in her as it does in me, and she will fight to stay and die here, I am certain of it."

Louise blinked heavily. Already, the tragic joviality and the underlying air of melancholy to every action here were beginning to wear at her soul, for all that she had only been in this room for mere minutes. But to hear that a child that young would try not to be rescued, would be willing to die here in the name of honour that she was truly too young to understand? "Why?" she whispered.

"She is a princess of Albion, and knows her duty." The Prince Wales squared his jaw. "I, however, believe my own duty will be enough to pay off any debt of our family to Lord and Founder," he said softly, eyes drifting over towards a dancing couple where, Louise noted, the woman had a scandalously low-cut dress.

"I see," she replied, biting her lip.

"Your highness," Viscount Wardes said, leaning across Louise to talk to the man on the other side of her, "I have talked with others here, and I would be correct in saying that the ship will depart for Tristain, from your ingenious hidden tunnels, tomorrow morning?"

The Prince Wales nodded. "Closer to midday than dawn, yes; the movements of Albion are such that we would be exposed at dawn. Nevertheless, yes, it should be before midday. I will be there to see you off."

Wardes nodded, the nod of one soldier to another. "I understand. Die bravely. And," he turned to Louise, "it would be better not to fill up on starters, my little Louise. Hence, before the main course is served, might you honour me with a dance, so that the two of us may work up an appetite?" He winked at her and the Prince Wales. "I hear the chicken glazed with honey is a speciality of Albion, and they can do wonderful things with sugared rices."

Sliding her chair backwards, Louise smiled, the feeling within her genuinely happy as opposed to the brave face she had been putting around in the midst of all this jovial melancholy. "My dear viscount," she replied, formally, in High Tristainian, "I would be delighted to do so."

* * *

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* * *

Feet whirled across the floor as violoncellos marked out the steps of the gavotte. It was dark outside, night having fallen, and the light of the blue moon streamed down through the windowpanes, casting the stained glass in a strange light tainted by the red of the campfires outside the castle walls. Inside, the magelights were bright, and the ancient banners of Albion resplendent fluttered in false breezes.

And all eyes were on one couple.

No. That was not true.

All eyes were on the pink-haired girl who, in her borrowed silk dress, captivated anyone who looked at her. No other pairs danced, because that might risk obscuring one's own sight of the spectacle, and that could not – would not – be permitted by one's heart. There was something alien about the way she moved, but the mind did not seem to care, and the spirit was twisted by the sight of it. How could the eye be forced to track the casual movement of a hand in that way? How could each step of a foot force one's own feet to jog? Why was the thought of interrupting, of breaking the flow so utterly abhorrent? It was not that she danced with unprecedented grace, though that was true; her steps were the very essence of perfection, better than a mortal man could do, and her partner was rendered clumsy and graceless in the eyes of all onlookers by her elegance. No, mere perfection was not enough to describe the hypnotic sinuous motions that composed this gavotte. Here, on the eve before battle, was beauty without malice, grace beyond compare, and it cried out for all to love her.

It was an effort of will akin to a master's spell to resist it. So close to war, to conflict, who had the will to do that?

Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière danced, and in her dance in the last ball of Albion she ensnared all who looked upon her.

Weeping, the instrumentalists came to the end of their piece, broken-hearted that they could not play on, that they would end this. And as the bows lifted from the violoncellos, there was silence.

"_My dearest, most beloved, finest lady, that was exquisite,_" Marisalon crowed within her mind. "_Dances are the highest form of beauty, the most profound grace, and you, as chosen of the King of Creation himself, are worth of him! Oh, that I could join you in this!_"

"Louise, my dear Louise," Wardes said, his void almost a croak, in the odd quiet. "Let me fetch you a drink."

She smiled sunily, as she stared around at the oddly vacant-eyed faces all around her, flushed by his admiration and the praise of the neomah within her head. "My lord, that is hardly necessary. It was only one dance," she said, with a casual shrug. "I am not tired at all."

"Nevertheless," Wardes said, and left it at that, as he almost bodily dragged his fiancé away from the dance floor. The motion seemed to break the spell, and the others stirred, though there was a vacancy of expression, a tear in many eyes, which spoke of the marks which that dance had burned into them. Passing Louise a glass of red wine, Wardes took one for himself, and downed half of it in a single, desperate gulp, like that of a drowning fish.

Louise glared at him in half-resentment, her lips twisting into a pout. She took a sip of her own wine, noting that the Albionese seemed to be serving fortified wine, and swirled it around. Wardes was staring at her with narrowed eyes, which were slightly wild.

"Where did you learn to dance like that?" he asked, leaning over her.

The girl sniffed. "Mother ensured we were all taught, like proper ladies should," she retorted, a little part of her amazed at how she was acting around Viscount Wardes. Perhaps it was just easier to be coldly arrogant at him, easier certainly than having to face the mixed emotions about what they had done together. Because as long as she could be chill and treat him like another one of the boys in her class at the Academy, she wouldn't...

He bowed before her. "Louise, in all my years, and in the courts and castles I have visited, I have never seen anything like that. It was wonderful, and you..." he licked his lips, "you were more beautiful than anything I have ever seen before." His shoulders slumped. "Spare a man's heart, though, when he is still tired from magic-use."

... be blushing bright read and stammering. "Th-thank you," she managed, resisting the urge to clamp her hands to cheeks she knew would be flaming red. "You were... um... also good."

"My little Louise," he said, earnestly, "not compared to you. Not compared to that. I am only a soldier, after all."

"You're not!" she blurted out, realising she had been a little loud, and flinching. "You're not _just _a soldier."

"Well, perhaps." He blinked heavily, and took another, rather more moderate sip of his wine. "But, my Louise, I have been meaning to talk to you. On this trip, but particularly, since those treacherous Albionese destroyed our ship. It is fortunate that we managed to end up in this place, and that there is a way out, but even then, there is risk."

The girl blinked. "I'm not sure what you mean," she said, huddling both hands around her wine.

"What I mean by that," the viscount said, tucking a loose strand of grey hair behind his ear before reaching into a pocket, "is that there is a chance that the ship we shall take tomorrow might also be attacked, and captured or worse, shot down immediately. And though I will naturally try my best to protect you, I am tired. You might well get away when I fall." He paused. "And considering the events of that... of that night when the strange armoured men attacked us... well."

Louise blushed bright red. "Um..." she began, not quite sure where he was going with this line of approach.

From his pocket, he removed a small box. "We are already engaged, you and I, and thus in the eyes of God I have your parents' permission. The royals of Albion, just like home, are the children of Brimir, and so can carry out a marriage as any priest could. And should issue result from... those events, marriage would ensure legitimacy even I die. I sinned through my own weakness then; I must make things right. And after that dance... my little Louise, please, I beg of you," he said, opening the box to reveal a ring, "will you marry me?"

The pink-haired girl blinked. She opened her mouth. She closed her mouth.

"Yes," she said.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The night sky through the window was gem-studded, the velvet black studded with constellations and lesser stars. It was beautiful, for in Albion above the clouds everything was clearer. Below the sky, though, were the fires of war. The campfires and occasional patches of magelight of the Republican army covered the ruins of New Castle and surrounded the town outside the walls. Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière turned her head from the window, and sighed.

"She says to hold still," Princess Sophia noted, in response to the babble of words from the commoner who was adjusting the wedding dress and mantle. The younger girl was sitting on the dressing table so her eyes were slightly above Louise's own, swinging her legs, as she spoke to Louise in High Tristainian and translated what the commoner maid said. "It's an awfully pretty dress," she said, solemnly, smoothing down her own clothing, which was a pale blue that contrasted to her darker eyes. "And you're a very good dancer."

"Thank you, your highness. And yes, it is," Louise said, gasping slightly as the commoner adjusted the sit of the stomacher, the stiff paper of the Prince Wales' letters tucked into her chemise jabbing into her. The princess spoke sharply to the maid for a few moments, and the clothing was loosened, allowing the pink-haired girl to breathe more easily.

"Big sister Elizabeth wore it when she got married," the little girl said, twirling one finger in her blonde hair. "She wasn't very happy because she didn't want to have to marry a Germanian because, number one, that meant that she couldn't become queen here, and number two, he was all old. Even older than she was. Like... ancient."

"Even older than Viscount Wardes?" Louise asked, smiling despite her worry.

"Oh, yes! Really, really ancient! He has _grey hair_... and not the kind of grey hair that the viscount has! The kind of grey hair which used to be a different colour! That makes him _ancient_. Almost as old as _Daddy_, only his hair is white and that makes him older than grey."

"Mmm." Louise paused for a moment. Well, it wouldn't hurt to say this here, would it? "I have a friend who has to marry a Germanian, too," she said. "She doesn't really want to, either."

The little girl nodded sadly. "When I'm older, I'm going to marry who I want to," she said. "Only... there aren't enough princes around. I mean, I can't marry my _brother _and you don't have any princes in Tristain and Gallia only has a princess and Romalia has a pope. So if you want to marry a prince, you have to either marry a Germanian, or some silly prince of some teeny tiny Otmani place or a prince of the Commonwealth... and they aren't _real _princes! There was a boy I used to play with who was a Duke and dukes are acceptable but then Gewiesse fell and I haven't heard from him since and my big brother said he didn't know what had happened to him but I think he was lying."

"It is a big problem," Louise said, sounding distracted as she stared out the window again at the distant lights around the city.

"It's going to be so glorious!" the little girl chirped up. "Father and my brother are going to beat those traitors and we can move back to Londinium. They're going to be punished! In the name of Albion!"

Louise paused, the breath catching in her throat not only because of the little girl's words, but also because the laces were tightened again. "Of course, your highness," she said.

"Nuh uh!" With an exceptionally serious face, Princess Sophia wagged her finger at her. "That's the not-answering voice, which adults use when they're lying to you by saying things that they think you'll accept! Well, you're not a real adult, so you can't use it on me!"

The pink-haired girl reddened. "I'm s-sixteen," she retorted, "I'm getting married, and that makes me an adult!"

There was a moment of perplexity on the little girl's face. "Really?" She blinked. "Well, that doesn't matter! You don't think we'll win!" She bit down on her lip. "I... I don't think anyone thinks we'll win, but we have to," she whispered, softly. "My father wants to send me away to big sister Elizabeth and my brother told me to go while he wins the battle so I don't have to see the fighting, but I'm not stupid. I know people don't think we're going to win. They're wrong!" The little girl's alabaster skin was starting to get rather more pink and blotchy around her eyes, which were welling with tears. "Aren't they?" There was a babble of Albionese from the commoner. "She says to stretch your arms out so she can do the sleeves up," the girl added. "But... aren't they?"

Louise took a deep breath. She really wanted to play with her dress, stare at her hands, do anything apart from look at that teary, earnest face, but the commoner lacing up her sleeves made it rather hard to do so. "Your highness," she began slowly, "there are a lot of enemies, and though the loyal subjects here will probably win – and the Lord favours the children of Brimir – there might be a lot of damage to the place, and there is also the risk that the traitors... who are, after all, traitors, might cheat in some way and not play fair. I talked to your brother, and he said that I should make sure you were safe on the ship, and protect you in Tristain. I can introduce you to Princess Henrietta. She's one of my oldest friends, as well as my ruler."

Princess Sophia sniffled. "'Kay," she said, softly, slipping off the table to try to hug Louise. Before she could get there, she was warned off by a musketline barrage of Albionese from the maid, who dropped her work to give the girl a handkerchief before she could get her face on the wedding dress. "I... I think I'd like that." She forced herself to smile, a thin, watery thing, turning to pick up the bridal veil and mantle, both adorned with everfresh flowers. "After all, princesses should be friends and help each other, yes?" she said, as she stood on tiptoe to help pin the veil into Louise's hair.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The chapel was nearly empty, for almost all of the Albionese nobles were still at the party. There were more children here than adults. Princess Sophia had, in a show of initiative, rounded up other noble children, and an impromptu number of flower girls distributed bouquets purloined from various places over the castle.

Wardes and Louise stood up in front of Cearl, who was standing below the image of the Founder Brimir, wearing his official uniform. Wardes, who himself was wearing his usual clothes under a groom's mantle likewise borrowed, bowed his head in respect to the Prince Wales.

"Well then, let us begin the ceremony. I will do this in High Tristainian, for you two." The blond man clapped his hands once. "Lord in heaven, hallowed be your name, and smile with your favour." Raising his wand, he waved it around his head, three revolutions drawing out the room. "We thank you for the wind; north, south, east and west, and for the changing of the world, and call upon it to bless these two as they set aside their families and become one flesh, one soul in your eyes. We thank you for the fire, for illumination and for passion, and call upon it to bless these two such that their marriage is joyous and burns bright. We thank you for the earth, for steadfastness and honesty, and call upon it to bless these two so they may endure all hardships. We thank you for the waters, for secrets and mysteries, for mingling and unity, and call upon them such that this marriage is blessed with new life. And in all things, Lord God who sent the Founder Brimir forth that we might be saved from the evils of the elves and given freedom, we thank you for the void, which is all things and by which all things may be possible. Lord, Founder, we thank you."

"Thank the Founder. Thank the Lord," Louise said, mind working on reflex, her voice a chorus with the other ones in the room. The ivory-white veil was like mist in front of her face, and she tried to suppress the guilt that told her she should not be wearing it, that she was not entitled to such a mark of purity.

"Bridegroom, Viscount Jean-Jacques Francis de Wardes. Do you take this woman as your wife, and swear to respect and love her in the name of the Founder Brimir? Through the changing of the seasons, and until the end of days, do you swear to be by her side, under sun and the two moons alike? And in sadness and joy, blessings and misfortune, shall you be one with her and her with you, such that in the eyes of the heavens you are together?"

Wardes nodded solemnly. "I swear to do so," he said, bringing his right hand to his heart in a salute.  
The Prince Wales looked at Louise and smiled encouragingly.

"Bride, the third daughter of the Duke de La Vallière, Louise Françoise le Blanc de La Vallière. Do you take this man as your husband, and swear to respect and love him in the name of the Founder Brimir? Through the changing of the seasons, and until the end of days, do you swear to be by his side, under sun and the two moons alike? And in sadness and joy, blessings and misfortune, shall you be one with him and him with you, such that together you will bring new life into this world?"

A pause. A terrible, extended pause, as Louise felt the future echo out in front of her. Should she? Would she? Was she truly doing this for the right reasons? Yes, her and Wardes had... but did they need to get married? From her talk with Monmon oh so few days ago, there were certainly ways around it. There was the hypocrisy revealed to her of society that condemned such things in public but practiced such things in private. Did she really love him, or was she just snarled in the web of what other people wanted of her?

"_My princess,_" Marisalon, speaking unexpectedly, said, "_my fair princess, there is only one thing I can say. And that is do as you wish, for you are the one who matters here. Is this what you wish to do?_"

"Yes. I do," said Louise, stomach a-flutter with butterflies as she stared up into his clear grey eyes.

And she was certain. Within her, within her heart, all her previous uncertainty and doubt crystallised into iron hard resolution. She loved him, she really did, and she could have chosen to run away from him, to flee. She could have chosen to be a little girl, but she was not a little girl. She loved him, he loved her. This was not only the progression of a betrothal set up when she was six, this was how things were _meant _to be. From this day on, she would protect him just he protected her, love him as he loved her, and never, ever, ever betray him. To do otherwise would be the same thing as death.

"You may now kiss the bride," she heard the Prince Wales say, from seemingly a long way away. She took this opportunity for the excuse it was, as Wardes, _her husband_, lifted her veil.

Eyes welling up with inner seas of happiness, cheeks blushing bright red, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him full on the lips.

* * *

{0}

* * *

There had been applause and hearty congratulations from those who had remained at the party. There had been toasts for Viscount Wardes from already-tipsy men, and women had flocked in to congratulate the still-blushing bride. King Jacomus had been helped to his feet, and he had personally blessed both of them. There had been salutes and cheering and celebrations of the virtue of the Viscount and his new Viscountess. And throughout it, as it got later and later into the night, Louise had been getting more and more frustrated.

But now they had left, for quarters hastily assigned to them. Now they were all alone, just her and her new husband, all ready to do... things. Blushing bright red as she was carried in his arms, she thought of her experiences already with him, and compared them to the wide open waters of sexuality and possibility that Marisalon suggested for her. Oh yes, yes, yes, it was going to be...

"My sweet Louise, my bride," Wardes said, gently laying her down upon the bed, "I fear I must leave you now."

Her eyes widened, her jaw went slack, as if she had just been slapped. "Wh-wh-why?"she stammered, her previous flush going to leave her as pale as a ghost. "Is there... am I not beautiful... why do you not..." She trailed off, jaw working.

Bending down, he kissed her on the hand. "It is not your fault at all," he said. "But I am still tired from all the magic I have used and I did not sleep well on the boat either, for I had to maintain the favourable winds." He tensed his jaw slightly. "I have talked with the apothecary, and he has prepared a weak sleeping potion for me, to ensure I have uninterrupted rest, but can be woken should the Albionese engage in any form of early attack."

Louise said nothing, but her hands balled into fists.

"I had hoped there would be more special things on our wedding night," Wardes said, regretfully, "but the current situation renders such luxuries impossible. So I will leave you to have proper rest, too, as you mentioned that you have been sleeping poorly, and offer only the promissory note that when we get to a place where such things are possible, my dearest wife, we can have our nights of romance to your heart's desire." He blinked. "You do of course understand the severity of the situation, do you not?"

"... I do," Louise said, pouting.

"It is not through any lack of beauty on your part," the man grinned sheepishly, "as we have already shown I find you most attractive. But, my sweet Louise, please, do understand that I will be expected to help the ship tomorrow, and I will be no good to anyone if I cannot even conjure up the least breeze."

"Y-you seemed to be okay," Louise stammered. "Couldn't... we at least once? And then you," she blushed red, "c-could go sleep elsewhere. Please?" she begged.

The Viscount looked tempted for a moment, but shook his head. "No," he said regretfully, "I cannot. It is already past midnight, and we will be setting off early. I recommend that you get as much rest as possible, too, for I may well need you should the Albionese manage to board us." He leant over her, to kiss her chastely on the cheek. "A promise for later, my wife," he said, bowing, before he left.

The soft noise of the door closing seemed like the slamming of that jail cell below in the dungeons in Louise's head. And then there was silence, his footsteps barely heard as he padded away down the hallway. The pink-haired girl waited until she could hear nothing of him, and then waited another minute in the dimly lit suite for good measure.

A pillow erupted in green fire, torn asunder by pale hands, the feathers burning like dying embers to fall as white ash on the floor. A kick demolished a chair, which combusted with a fairly heard scream. Still clad in her wedding dress, the girl let out a bellow of sheer rage.

"How _dare _he! How _dare _he? Men! Men! They'll sleep with... with that _cow _Von Zerbst and Monmon was right to cut all ties to Guiche for being... for b-being an unfaithful little ill-bred _fungus_, but will m-m-my _husband _sleep with me on our wedding night? No, he won't!" She screamed again, and went looking for something else to destroy.

To say that the new Viscountess Wardes was displeased would be to gravely understate her personal feelings.

After the third chair, however, Louise had settled down into a sort of bitter put-upon mentality, not helped by the nagging sensation that she perhaps should not have destroyed the furniture of the royal house of Albion. Marisalon, too, sounded rather disappointed in her mental commentary, for all the neomah tried to hide it. And her suggestions that maybe they could continue to work on the basic verbs of the strange language she spoke, 'Old Realm', were neither given nor accepted with good grace.

The sound of someone trying to as silently as possible open the door came as a welcome relief to the two of them. Still clad in her wedding dress, which had turned out to be impossible to remove on her own, Louise sprung to her feet only to throw herself back onto the double bed in an attempt at lounging. She would have pulled the neckline of her dress down, but the underlayers of the royal wedding dress of Albion were almost skin-tight, a translucent diaphanous veil flush against her skin that rose up to her jawline in its embrace and left no room to expose flesh. And as she had already found, the upper layers were laced or hooked to it, and as a result, the girl couldn't remove it herself.

"My husband," Louise said, in what she really hoped was a seductive voice, "so good of you to come back. Now... oh."

That exclamation was at the pale-skinned blonde little girl whose dark-blue eyes widened as she realised that there was someone in this room.

"Sorry," Princess Sophia blurted out in the old Brimiric dialect the royalty and nobles seemed to use here, her head retreating back under the blankets she wore like a cloak. "I didn't mean to..."

Louise sighed. Oh well. "It's fine," she said back, in Romalian, before switching to High Tristainian. "Your highness, what are you doing here?" She paused. "And how did you get the lock open?" she asked, prompting the little girl to blush red and stutter.

Closer observation, however, revealed that the princess's eyes were already reddened, and her exquisitely formed nose was running. And the longing expression she had... Louise felt a surge of empathy within her. Yes, the Albionese princess wasn't having to fight off allegations of _inexprimé_, and she wasn't a failure, a Zero, faced by tutor after tutor giving up in disgust. But from their previous conversation, she was a girl stuck in a world which she couldn't affect, which she couldn't live up to the expectations of, and which wouldn't let her do what she _should _do. Louise knew how that felt. She knew just how that felt. Princess Sophia Stewart just looked so pathetic and miserable that her heart went out to her.

And at the very least, she could help unlace elements of the corsetry so Louise could lie down more comfortably.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The magelights in the underground cavern were bright compared to the ones in the castle above. Bare stone was everywhere, smoothed down by the earth mages who had accentuated this natural cave-fissure until it was a hidden dock. The darkness of the channel which led down to the underside of the flying continent was broken by the magelights that marked the walls, and the voices of the men working down here produced strange echoes from the depths. There was a pronounced funk in the air, the scent of dragon pens with an undertone of the unmistakable lightning-like smell of wind dragons, and their presence was only confirmed by the wineglass-cry of one of the scaled beasts, drowning out all the conversation from the humans in the area.

"Quieten the beasts!" the Prince Wales ordered, hands clasped behind his back as he paced back and forwards at the quayside. "Keep them under control!" It was late, and he had too many things to do this night before he could rest even without the three dragons they had left causing problems. "How goes the loading, Mancaster?"

"I would reckon three-quarters complete," said the other man, dusting off his hands. "We have already taken the windstones on board, so we may cast off when needed, and the supplies are being loaded along with what treasure is left to us. The monarchy may be exiled, but it will not be extinguished."

Gripping the handrail until his knuckles turned white, Prince Cearl stared at the ship's hull with no expression at all. "Yes," he said, flatly. "And..."

"Your highness," a man's voice came from behind them, speaking in High Tristianian-accented Court Albionese. "I have been looking for you. I wished to talk with you before I slept."

The Prince Wales' eyebrows fluted upwards in surprise. "I did not expect to see you here, Viscount Wardes," he said, "least of all on your wedding night when you had gone to those lengths to get me to marry you to that sweet girl." He did not like this man, Cearl had already decided. Some of it was likely professional; as the knight-captain of one of the three Tristainian hands of the state, he was a killer, and someone loyal to the Crown rather than Princess Henrietta, unlike the new Viscountess Wardes. But there was just something about him that displeased the blond man, a certain smug arrogance that the Prince Wales could not help feel was judging the efforts he had made in service of his kingdom, and finding them wanting.

Wardes flapped a hand in his direction. "There are more important things than my personal indulgence," he said, "and the marriage had its own reasons."

Prince Cearl sighed. "Would it be at all related to the fact that you appear to have lost your chaperones back in La Rochelle?" he asked, a somewhat arch note entering his voice. "And so you chose to do the decent thing?"

There was a slight, almost imperceptible blush on the Tristainian man's face. "I am concerned about the chance that this vessel could be intercepted on its way to Tristain," he said, ignoring the prince's comments. "There exists a cordon of rebel ships around this place, I know this for a fact. I will be on the ship, yes, and I will try my best to protect it, but I am still exhausted. How many other mages will there be on board, and how do you plan to evade the Desbattionarianist vessels?" He sagged, slightly. "I hope, for both your and my own sake, you have answers, because if you have any plans around my presence, I will not be able to provide one tenth of the aid I might be able to normally. And might we make this quick? I am headed to the infirmary to sleep."

"You're falling asleep on your feet," the Prince Wales said, bluntly, "... but you may be right." Subtly, carefully, he adjusted his grip on his wand. "Let us go up to my room... Mancaster, you will be able to handle things down here?"

"Aye, your highness," said the Albionese noble. He accepted the notes passed to him by his prince, already looking over the golems loading the ship.

"Then let us go on," the blond man said, gesturing towards the stairs back up to main body of the castle. As the Tristainian man turned, the prince whispered the words to a spell which would direct magic, focussing the cantrip on the back of the other man. He was, naturally enough for a knight-captain, heavily magical, almost everything he carried warded or enchanted in some way. The Prince Wales smiled faintly as he felt the characteristic feeling of strength in the other man's clothes, which produced cloth which could turn aside a sword blow. But the man himself? He was weak, hollow, almost drowned out magically by the things he carried. The prince let out a slow breath; he was fairly sure that he would be as limp as overboiled cabbage if he was trying to move around with his will so depleted.

It was another blow to his plans. Prince Cearl had hoped that Viscount Wardes had been faking it, that he had been saving something back to help protect the outbound vessel, in an attempt to avoid getting Tristain's representative drawn into a _casus belli_. He could respect that. But the man was drained, exhausted, a shell of what he should have been capable of.

Someone would have to protect the ship in its escape. And as it stood, the prince could only pray that the noblewomen on board would be enough should the ship be caught. The favour of God would be needed for fair winds and safe passage, and the Prince Wales had seen enough that he could doubt that the Lord was listening.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"_Well, look on the bright side, my fair lady,_" Marisalon said, in a tone of voice which indicated that she did not really see any bright side. "_At least you have someone snuggled up to you in bed on your wedding night._"

Louise did not dignify that with a response. Princess Sophia, after admitting that she had picked the lock to the door with magic – and what was a royal princess doing knowing how to do that? – had, at a simple question of 'Are you feeling all right?' run over to the pink-haired girl. Even now, she had her arms locked around Louise, sobbing wetly into her none-too-impressive bosom.

"There, there," she said, somewhat ineffectually. How exactly was she meant to comfort her? Louise's practical experience at aiding others when they were upset was negligible; indeed, it was usually her who was the one who got comforted. She briefly contemplated imperiously ordering the little girl to cease her piteous crying, and discarded the idea as not likely to work, and rude to someone who outranked her. What would big sister Cattleya do?

Hugs. Big, expansive, all-consuming, smothering hugs. And admittedly Louise was underequipped compared to her older sister in the specific tools used in Cattleyan hugs, but it couldn't hurt. Wrapping her arms around the princess, she rocked her from side to side awkwardly. What now?

"Do y-you want to talk about it?" she started, reading the words off the invisible script inside her head.

"_That's it, wise lady,_" Marisalon said. "_Of course! You are doing well, to work on getting the soon-to-be-Queen-in-Exile of Albion friendly with you! And I thought you didn't care; no, of course, you are wise and kind and most devious and..._"

'Marisalon. Shut up.' Louise paused, and considered the next step. "It'll be okay?" she ventured.

"No, it won't," came the muffled voice from her chest. "It's... it's not going to... t-to be okay! D-D-Daddy is g-going to die, and... and Cearl is g-g-going to die and... and..." she trailed off again into sobbing, any words lost in the burble of unhappiness. Louise just held onto her, and let her cry her heart out, sobbing into the front of her wedding dress. The little girl smelt of citrus fruits, the new Viscountess Wardes noted as she lay there, feeling a bit guilty about the fact that some of the things she was thinking about was how her arms were starting to go numb with all the hugging, that the tears were unpleasantly damp, and the little girl's face was digging into her.

Louise pursed her lips. As soon as she got home, she was going to apologise to Cattleya for doing this to her when she was younger.

Nevertheless, she held the princess until her crying softened, and stopped. The little girl still clung to her, but she rolled away, enough that Louise could shift. At least the enchanted fabric of the royal wedding dress dried miraculously fast, the water simply vanishing.

"I'm..." there was a sort of snort-hiccup from Princess Sophia, "... I'm so, so, so sorry," she said, softly. "I... pl-please don't tell Daddy about this. H-h-he doesn't like it when I cry and... and the m-maids tell him so I went to this room because it's normally empty only you were here and... and... and pr-princesses aren't meant to cry..." she trailed off. Her alabaster skin was botchy, and her blonde hair a mess; she did not look regal.

"There, there," Louise said, on the grounds that it had so far, if not worked, at least not made things any worse.

"... b-b-but this is _my _place and the maids don't know I taught myself to open the door and close it behind me and..." she sniffed, "this used to be Mama's bed, they say. I come through here because it's m-m-meant to smell like the flowers she liked." There was a long pause. "I w-wish she hadn't died," the little girl said in a quiet voice. "Then D-Daddy wouldn't be so disappointed in m-me."

Something went hard and cold inside Louise. A princess not being meant to cry was one thing. Crying in public was a sign of extreme grief; to do otherwise was weakness, and something her mother had made quite clear to her. But to be disappointed in one's child because – as the Prince Wales had mentioned – her mother had died in childbirth? That was something else entirely. Princess Sophia was a mage, and she seemed obedient and from what Louise could remember of Princess Henrietta at the same age, not too different from other princesses. Parents weren't meant to be disappointed in you if you could cast properly, if you tried your best!

"You shouldn't be upset about that!" she said, forcefully, pulling herself up to a sitting position. "It's not your fault!"

The little girl looked up at her with watery eyes. "My brother says that," she said, softly, shuffling closer to the pink-haired girl, "but... but I don't think he means it. He was older than I am now when she d-died, and... and that means he knew her before she died. It... it happened j-just as I was born. I... I wouldn't want anyone taking her away. I... I'd hate me."

"It's not your fault," Louise repeated, shaking her head, and trying her best to look serious. "Sometimes, people just die in childbirth, even with water mages around. It's one of the scary things about being a woman." She lay back down. "It's one of the things the Lord blessed us with, though, because we can make real life, while men can't, so that makes us better."

Princess Sophia hugged her tighter, and whispered, "You just got married. Please don't die having a baby."

Louise turned bright red, and began to splutter. "I... um... well," she began, and swallowed hard. "That is... I... it... um..." she tried again, stammering away into nothingness.

"_Oh, do not be concerned, my beautiful princess of the green sun,_" Marisalon cheerfully interrupted. "_Your body is so wonderful, so blessed by the favours of the King of Kings himself that you will not do so! And even if you did, I am sure that my presence within you would be enough to ward such mishaps off. I have made countless children, and over the years I have given birth to fourteen, and it is only things like humans that die in pregnancy._"

That was reassuring, Louise had to admit. It wasn't ever likely, not if a midwife was there, let alone a water mage healer, but with what had happened with Viscount Wardes and the fact that she was now married, she had to think about children as something which occupied her immediate future. That was scary. Very scary. And yet... a child in her arms, with pale pink hair, their eyes perhaps grey, a child that was hers, who wouldn't be a failure and who... yes, that might be nice.

Right now, there was a child _on _one of her arms, the princess's breathing suggesting that she had fallen asleep. Louise tried to shift her arm, but the way the little girl's breath caught and she gripped tighter thwarted her. She stared up at the ceiling. She wasn't mentally tired, but it had to be past midnight and her body felt like it needed rest.

Maybe if she just closed her eyes for a bit, she could get the benefits of sleep without dreaming. She just had to keep thinking about things, so she wouldn't fall asleep...

* * *

{0}

* * *

Pen scratching against parchment, the Prince Wales worked in the temporary room he had set up, down by the docks. Some of the ideas and warnings about ways which the Desbattionarianists might attack that Viscount Wardes had given were things that he had not thought of, and he was busy taking such things into account. That man was as skilled as he had heard; even a shell of himself, drained of magic, his brain was almost as deadly.

The crystal-glass cry of the wind-dragons sounded again. Prince Cearl ignored it, pulling himself to his feet onto aching legs. Wincing, he made his way to the side, and poured himself a half-glass of wine, diluting it down with water. He tapped his fingers against the wall, and thought.

Lord Fairfax was commanding the rebel forces here, that sly wolf of a man. An excellent general who had seen combat down against Gallian garrisons on Albionese islands down in the Great North Sea. A man who was good at the large plans, and deeply religious... which made his treason against the rightful Brimiric crown even more intolerable.

There was something he missing, the Prince Wales knew. He had overlooked something, and it was driving him to distraction. He'd spent the last hour going over everything, again and again and again. Something didn't quite fit. Even with all the notes here, all the details he knew of the force composition of the rebels from intercepted messages, there was something he was missing.

What was it?

* * *

{0}

* * *

The childish figure of Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière poked her head out of the bushes, and watched as the servants headed onwards. They were looking for her, but she didn't want to be found. She couldn't face her mother, couldn't face the fact that she had no skill at magic, while her older sisters were so skilled for their ages. Even Cattleya, with her illness, could do more than her. And the servants knew it too; even the help knew that she was useless, knew that the title of _inexprimé _was being thrown in her direction, and only the de la Vallière name, and the few, uncontrolled, irregular explosions that she could produce was keeping her safe from that.

It was a terrible thing for a six-year old girl to know.

She wished she didn't know, that she didn't have to know.

But the life of a noble had many things that a commoner needed not concern themselves with. Their own duties were to follow the orders of their superiors in blood, to pay their taxes, and to pray to Lord and Founder, nothing more. They did not have to concern themselves with blood purity, with heritage and the potential for ignominy that came with it. Such things were beyond their ken. They could marry for love, not for necessity.

At this moment, Louise would have sacrificed all of this to not have to have overheard the argument between her parents, her father alarmed, her mother scarily intense, on the subject of their youngest daughter.

But now she was in the Secret Garden. Her special place, close enough to the estate to be accessible on six-year old legs, yet far enough away, and isolated enough, that no-one would find her easily. And it was wrong, wrong, wrong. Verdigris consumed the trees, blue-green plaque flaking away to reveal the gleaming metal underneath. Knee-high flowers made of indigo ice bloomed everywhere, filling the air with a peculiarly acrid scent that grated at the nose, and the lake was stained with rainbow colours. A bird thrashed in agony in the shallows, before something monstrous shifted under the depths and the pained creature was gone in a splash of not-water which consumed and corroded the land. There was a central island, with a single house made of the same white stone as the broken ruins around it, which stood upon a basalt protuberance which looked rib-like. Louise had a horrifying feeling that it was the white marble that was the intrusion onto the world.

Only the small boat, with the blanket she kept there for when she wanted to hide, seemed untouched by the horrors that were consuming her world, corrupting her safe place. The girl dove into the vessel, and snuggled under the sheets, only to find her head on the lap of a lavender-skinned woman.

"Oh, my _lady_," Marisalon said, rubbing her thighs together, "how wonderfully enthusiastic."

Louise flinched away, rocking the boat enough that it almost capsized, and incidentally noting she seemed to be back to her normal teenage self. "What are you doing... h-h-here! In my dream! L-like this! Wearing that!" she screamed at her familiar, pointing one shaking finger at the neomah.

Marisalon shrugged, leaning back to dip her hands in the water. "Wearing what?"

"That's my w-w-wedding dress! Only... only... only you t-tore it so you're showing off your legs and... and you... you perverted thing! You shouldn't be doing that!"

It was at about this point that Louise realised that she was naked. With a hysterical shriek, she recoiled away, falling backwards out of the boat, into the polluted lake, and up out of the lake back into the boat.

Her response to this impossibility was to scream again.

"My fair lady," Marisalon said in a consolatory tone, "this is a dream."

"This is a n-n-nightmare!" the girl screamed, trying to cover herself as well as clap her hands to her bright red cheeks, and failing for lack of limbs. "Get out!"

The neomah shrugged. "Nightmare and dreams are the same thing," she said laconically. "And I like what you've done with the place. It makes it feel more comfortable."

Louise's eyes went wide, and she stared around the tainted landscape. She went to scream again, and paused. "This isn't my dr-dream," she stammered, arms hugged around herself and shivering in the too-hot sunlight. "I've never been here! This... this shouldn't be like this! It shouldn't!" Tears began to seep from her eyes, crying at least as much from anger as unhappiness. "Why... why can't I ever get a good night's sleep?"

"There, there," Marisalon said, wrapping her arms around her naked master, pulling her into an embrace. "Please, don't cry, fair mistress. This is only natural. Please, I will try to cheer you up howsoever you wish."

"Don't think about _that_" Louise muttered, still crying into her familiar's bosom.

"I have been trying to make contact here for several nights, and most inconveniently..." and here the lavender-skinned woman's voice dropped, "... most inconveniently, many of your other dreams have been far less stable than this." With an almost sinuous motion of shrugs, the neomah began to shed her dress, passing the dry white fabric over to Louise. "And so you don't spend your time concerned about your state of dress, you can have mine. I would rather you spend less time screaming. We need to talk, and I do believe you need some comforting."

Louise turned even redder, if that was possible, and looked for a moment as if she was about to argue, but her sense of personal shame won out over the sense of shame from being around a lavender-skinned, bald woman wearing about three handkerchiefs' worth of material, and she wrapped the dress around herself, like a towel or a sarong. It would be too hard to put it on properly, and it helped, even if she was still drenched.

"I could be a man if it would please you," Marisalon said casually, puffing her generous chest out with a wicked smile.

The girl's eyes widened in rage, before her entire expression shifted, taking on a look of righteous cunning. "You have a physical body here, head-familiar," she said, with a malicious grin. "That means I can punish you for improper suggestions. So don't push your luck."

"Punish me? Oh, yes _please_, my most beautiful mistress, I need to be..." the neomah paused, blinked, and then slapped herself hard around the face. "Argh!" She did it again. "Have to focus!" A third slap. "Even if it's been far, far too long since... well, I have to take advantage of this stable dream, and... oh, _drat_."

Her eyes flicked over to the sixteen-year old Wardes approaching the boat. His eyes burned with golden light, and his footsteps ignited the world. The look on his face could only be described as raw malevolence, sheer murderous intent as he gazed upon the two of them. And he was not alone, for half-seen figures, things of flame and wind and water and earth marched with him. Grabbing an oar, Marisalon immediately cast off from the shoreline, onto the brightly coloured not-water, and began to paddle as hard as she could, straining.

The nightmare-Wardes with the golden eyes did not stop, even at the edge. He marched straight into the water, and screamed until it covered his mouth. The transient things of elemental energy screamed too, save the watery ones which vanished into the depths without a sound. Louise covered her ears, weeping openly now, while Marisalon swore to herself in an alien language, and rowed as if pursued by terrors beyond belief.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Albion was low now, having sunk above the thick banks of cloud that half-filled the night sky, and so it the roof of the world was a mere hundred metres above. The two moons were in the sky, waxing though not yet full, and their light through the gaps in the clouds cast two shadows upon everything that moved in the darkness.

Men were moving. Men armoured in black-painted steel, with soot-blacked faces, their gear muffled in wool. Silent wisps of air under control of wind mages whispered their way through the skies, carrying words between the army and the fleet blockading the port. The ships opened their dragonnests on the side away from New Castle, allowing the beasts within fresh air for the first time in days.

Lord Fairfax stepped out of the planning tent pitched in one of the squares of the conquered New Castle City, glancing around. The fires were still lit by empty tents, and braziers were being maintained by runners keeping the illusion of just another light going. In the chill night air, he took deep breaths in an attempt to calm the pre-battle nerves. With a shake of his head, he dried his forehead on his sleeve, and turned to return to the tent.

As a result, he yelped when someone tapped him on the shoulder, whirling as he drew his wandblade. The motion was stopped by a grip which felt like steel, locking his arm rigid. He strained against it, and the grip proved to be as immovable as a granite statue. It belonged to a pale-faced woman, as tall as a man, dressed all in black. Cold and dead purple eyes, shaped in a way he had seen in no other man or woman met his, and he forced himself to relax.

"Lady Sheffield," he said, once he no longer felt like he was going to collapse from his heart giving out. "Founder, woman, don't sneak up on people like that!"

"I ask of pardon, my lord." It was a flat, oddly accented phrase, which the man felt was completely lacking in genuine apology. If another person had dared to treat him like that... but she wasn't 'another person'. She was directly from the Lord Protector's office, an agent of the Desbattion, and so he could not call her out.

He shook his head, glancing away from those eyes. "S'all right," he muttered. "I just didn't see you. The sentries were told to let you through."

She stared at him. She did not blink, even as the wind picked up, wafting smoke into their eyes.

"What is it, Lady Sheffield?" he asked, hoping to get her to go away again.

"The two companies of the grenadier guards are where they are meant to be, as you ordered. Here are the sketches you asked of me such that I should obtain them." In one gloved hand, she extended a roll of parchments. "They are accurate."

... Founder, what was her accent? Neither Albionese nor Tristainian nor Gallian or Germanian nor any other country he knew of, there was a dreadful antiquity about it, which had him thinking of sermons in ancient churches.

She tilted her head at him, a motion like some kind of child's doll. "That is all, Lord Fairfax. I go to monitor elements of the capture."

"Yes, yes," the commander said with a sigh of relief, as he turned to go back into the sweltering heat of the tent. Somehow, it seemed a lot more pleasant in there than any amount of talking to that woman, and her damn foreign ways.

No footsteps marked her passing, though already she was gone.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Green-burning fires danced upon the landscape, which would have looked like the countryside around the Academy were it not for the fact that everything from the hills to the trees was made of silver sand. Motes of crystalline light drifted through the air, and small patches of indigo ice blossomed like strange flowers on the sand-trees.

"My fair princess," Marisalon said, slumped upon the ground, the boat capsized and embedded in the dunes, "you thought of something else."

Louise groaned, and went to pull herself upwards. Viridian fire flared around her hand as soon as she touched the sand, and the girl recoiled in shock. The fire did not burn her, however, even though it melted the silver sand into shining glass, and unwillingly, she let out a giggle. Her bare feet left glassy footprints wherever she stepped, and the cool fire that ignited with every step was soothing rather than burning.

Marisalon, for her part, kept her distance.

"What now?" Louise asked, exhaling. Her breath roared out of her like the desert wind, sending dust scattering into the air, but somehow she did not feel surprised by this. She was rather more concerned right now with keeping the dress wrapped around her like a towel held up properly, because she did not trust the knot she had tied in the sleeves.

The neomah tapped her brass nails together, making a clicking noise. "My lady..." she began hesitantly, "forgive me if I seem nervous around you. Right now, in these dreams... your might is revealed, though I know not why, and..."

Louise was not listening. She was not listening because above her, the sky was haemorrhaging colour, the blue falling as indigo snow onto the sand, to leave it black and starless. Holding out her hand, she let the snow gather on it, ignoring the hissing steam that wafted around it when it melted. She felt no pain, even if there was brass underneath her flesh; brass pitted and corroded in verdigris flakes by the acrid snow. She should be scared by this, she knew intellectually. She was not. It was natural. It was right. Bending down, she scooped up a gritty ball of sand and discoloured snow, packing it tight.

"... I don't really know what is going on here, although the face of the King is borne upon you and it is..."

The neomah's ramblings were interrupted as Louise threw the sand-and-snowball at her, the ball clipping her along the side of her face. "Oh, shut up," Louise said, a note of self-satisfaction in her voice, before she pumped her fist, glee writ all across her expression. "Yes! That felt _wonderful_!"

The lavender-skinned woman leapt back onto her feet, a look of anger flitting across her features before it was suppressed. "Thank you, my lady," Marisalon said through gritted brazen teeth.

"You're welcome," Louise said, sweetly. She was not looking at the neomah, but instead gazing at her hand, and at the living brass under her skin. "Marisalon, why is my hand like that?"

"Still Covered In Weak Flesh Like That?" said her own voice. "I Do Not Know. We Must Thicken Our Skin Against The World More, So It Cannot Hurt Us."

Whirling, Louise stared at where the neomah had stood. In the place of the scantily clad woman-like thing, there were... hers. Several hers. Several hers who were not her.

Upon the silver stand they stood, never close enough to one another to touch. The world twisted, and suddenly they were surrounding her. She could still see them all, even though, by all rights, she should not have been able to. And as she gazed upon them, she realised that she could see the world through them. They were unreal, incomplete, and the metaphor of unfinished buildings sprung to mind unprompted, skeletal edifices lacking most of their structure. Six scaffold-hers stood, waiting, unmoving. And it was their inhumanity, their not-herness, and the nightmare cast of their features which was the only reason she did not protest more.

"Who are you! What are you doing, and where is my familiar!" she snapped at them.

"I Am You," said the foremost one, the one directly in front of her. Naked, her skin rune-covered burning brass, she nevertheless seemed the most complete of the not-hers. The burning viridian-and-brazen light surrounded her, enveloped her, and her imperious eyes were like a sight into an inner sun. And despite that inhumanity, there was something about her features such that Louise could not help but think of her mother. "I Am You. You Will Be Me."

"I Am You," said the not-her whose skin sublimated into the desert sands at the edges, and whose pink hair was tied in two blue bows. Ten tablets of engraved blue glass fanned out behind her, like strange wings, and locusts buzzed in opalescent flight above her head as a gleaming halo. In her white flowing dress, she looked regal, majestic, beautiful, but her face was sunk with a terrible cynicism, and tears dripped from her face, falling down to splash upon the ground where they scuttled away as scorpions. "I Am You, And I Am Becoming."

Compared to those two, the others were mere sketches in the air, and their voices were reedy whispers. Nevertheless, they spoke. "I Am You," said the not-her armoured in indigo ice that was painted in bright, fluorescent colours. A lush gravidity hung over her form, maternal curves evident, but there was something in the impossible depths of the skin-thick ice that covered her surface. Things moved below the surface of her skin, and bulged and kicked in her womb. "I Am You. I Am You In The Full Beauty Of Womanhood."

"And I Am You Too," said the not-her of light and crystals, her voices countless yet perfectly in harmony. Around her, the sands formed themselves into concentric circles which broke and began bud lesser circles, a fractal recursion of order. "I Am The Echo Of The World You Will Make."

The fifth not-her did not speak, her blood-red dress wrapped in winds the same colour such that one could not tell where one began, and the other ended. Eternally moving, she was a flickering wind-ghost within a greater storm. She did not speak, and yet she was heard. I Am You, she did not say, in a silence which ate sound. When You Are Me, We Won't Be Hurt Anymore.

The last was behind her. The last was closer than the others, for it was her own shadow, slung away under this green sun. Louise could feel the warmth of her own shadow-flesh against the back of her neck, too close for comfort. "i have always been you, little shadow," she said to herself, "writhing in your own pit of hatred."

"I am not you!" Louise shouted back. "None of you!"

"Not Yet," came the chorus of four voices, and one silence.

"liar," said her shadow.

And the green sun washed to gold, and _she _descended. And _she _was not only not her, _she _was not a not-her. _She _was Other and _she _was mighty, and choirs sung out _her _name. In _her _terrible light the not-Louises ignited, screaming, and their words were paeans of pain. "You are not me," _she _said in words which were like a hammer of will. "You desecrate me." In shining gold came _her _glory, and it was exalted to the heavens, from the lowest slums to the highest towers. Long was _her _life and mighty was _her _domain. And in _her _righteousness none dared oppose _her_, for in the name of the Highest of Holies, _she_ had come from the depths of ancient aeons to cleanse the wicked and profane, the defeated and cast-down. All hail _her _triumph! All hail Qu-

* * *

{0}

* * *

It is at such times, these liminal moments of borderlines and transitions, when the brevity of human life becomes most evident.

The clank of metal boots upon stairs, metal-clad arms scraping against walls, the heavy breathing of men. They stepped over bodies already minutes dead, a single blow to the base of the skull the killing wound.

One moment, a girl; the next a wife.

Slow-matches were lit, alchemically-soaked wicks burning a dull, barely-there red in the night. All that awaited was the order.

One moment, silence; the next noise.

"Joshua?" the guard standing on the last ship of the Royalist fleet began, raising his lantern. "Is that y..." and the lightning flashed out with an actinic thunderclap.

One moment alive; the next, dead.

All these moments are like sparks in the night, guttering flickers cast out by embers that burn so bright for but a second before they die, unmourned. For in the divine fire of creation there are countless embers and none could remember nor regret the passing of each cinder. Every man's an actor in uncounted tales, but neither men nor elves nor spirits nor gods care to remember the sum total of that which once was, but is no more.

The night dawned early as the guns of the Republicans roared as one.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise woke screaming.

Frantically, she scrabbled, gasping for air, trying to get the thing that was pinning her down off her chest. The light above her burned at her eyes, blinding her, and there was terrible thunder in the distance. Nature itself hated her, had cast her out, and...

... and she gasped for breath. Sitting upright, she panted, great shuddering breaths shaking her frame. She was... she was lying on a bed in a strange room, the lights still on, and she was in... yes, she was still in her wedding dress. The stiff papers of the Prince Wales' letter was jabbing into her side, and... and Princess Sophia was stirring beside her, groaning from the sudden waking. There was a prominent gash oozing blood on the little girl's face, a red line from where, Louise realised, she must have accidentally cut her with her nails as she thrashed around.

The thunder was still sounding.

"_The Black Boar!_" the neomah in her head shrieked in panic. "_He comes and we must... wait, no, that's not right. My lady, your dreams are _most_ disturbing at times. And it can't be stone rain, either. My lady, what is that noise?_"

"That's..." Louise began, tilting her head.

"C-cannons," Princess Sophia squeaked, shivering. "L-l-lots of them. I hate them. I hate them, I hate them!" One hand went to her cheek, came back red, and she squeaked, and began to dig in her pockets to find a handkerchief. "And I'm bleeding? Why am I bleeding?"

Ignoring her, Louise pulled herself to her feet, and strode over to the curtains, her dress flowing around her. Throwing them wide, she gazed out into the still-night from her balcony in the central citadel.

The sky was alight. The clouds were perhaps a hundred metres above the surface of Albion, and so the fires of war painted them a bloody red. Dragonfire bloomed in the night as did the bursts of elemental energy from mages on the walls. And everywhere there was the thunder-boom of cannon fire, and occasional cracks of musketry.

"Oh no," Louise said, softly.

"_Yes,_" Marisalon agreed, with the same edge of worry in her voice. "_My lady, my fair lady, we... we are in trouble. Aha! Yes, if we look at things then it all makes sense! Yes, my lady, we should have realised that from the start!_"

"Realised what?" Louise hissed out loud.

The neomah coughed. "_Why, that those orders that that dashingly handsome prince captured were fake. That he could translate them should have been enough of a clue; any sensible lord should have been changing the codes used to encrypt them frequently enough that, even if one was not using magical concealment for one's real messages, such a stroke of fortune would not strike._" Marisalon paused. "_I have done such things myself, and so, my lady, I apologise for not noticing this, but it does appear that they successfully lured that handsome prince back to this castle. It is most hilarious, the anguish on the face of a rival when they find that the place they fled to was filled with barrels of algarel, and this is much like it, although less beautifully direct. And if they knew enough to do that..._"

"The ship. They know about it," Louise said.

"They do?" said Princess Sophia, from behind her.

Louise blinked; she had forgotten about the blonde temporarily. Whirling on her toe, she turned away from the window, grabbing her staff-glaive. "Yes, they will," she said, sudden, unexpected certainty in her voice. "Can they get ships up there? If they can, they will be doing that. If they can't, the exit will be blockaded. And they have the castle surrounded, don't they? That means they're trapped, and they're probably... probably waiting for us to run to the ships."

The little girl nodded, eyes already damp again. From the sleeves of her mussed gown, she retrieved her wand in a shaking hand. "I'm only a dot class," she said in a tiny voice.

"What?" Louise blinked. "No, what we're going to do is find Viscou... my husband. And also your brother." Her knuckles whitened. "They'll know what to do, and if they don't, they're both powerful mages, and they're soldiers." Louise glanced back out the window, in time to see one of the cannon points on the outer wall shatter, blown apart by shells. "And we need to get away from the windows," she said, grabbing the little girl's wrist with her left hand. "Come on!"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Before the wall stood a woman in a black frock coat, her skin corpse-pale, her eyes hollow. She was flanked by things that, if one was not observant, would have appeared to be members of the Grenadier Guard of the Holy Republic of Albion. They were not, and the faint purple glow just at the edge of vision from, within their eyesockets was enough to put lie to that deception.

Mechanically, she made a V-symbol with her right hand, palm facing the towering final wall of New Castle. She placed her left hand, fingers splayed, behind it. Words fell from her mouth like rain, her phrases in the first language ever spoke solidifying as they left her throat to splash against the ground. The armoured figures around her did not speak, did not move, did not flinch, even as the earth began to shake.

She spoke the final word, and violet light blazed upon her forehead.

A house-sized section of wall ascended, rising up and separating. The stones that made it up were torn from one another, the layers of protective magics falling apart in bursts of light, and in the night those white flares burned like torches. They hung in the moment for a second, a moment of frozen time, such that all could see the final wall of New Castle was broken.

And then the stones exploded inward, scything through the buildings within the castle walls and cutting down men like wheat, only to detonate in killing fields of shrapnel.

The black-coated woman turned on her heel and walked away, flanked by her guards. Behind her, the republican soldiers swarmed forward through the new gap in the wall.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Dust hung in the air like sandstorms, choking and cloying. She could barely see the walls on either side of her, and she clung tighter to the hand of the other with her. Though she was not affected by this cursed haze, all around her, others were coughing and splitting; there were traces of blood in some people's coughing. It was all the fault of the silver sand creeping in from infinite wastes. The South was lost, and the toppleless towers of Rhamneash were now immersed in molten glass under depths of sand. Their casualties were extreme, and she did not look forwards to telling those in Rathess that the Dragon King dead would not be coming back, that they had been calcified into things of blue glass which had been enslaved by the Lawgiver and sent marching against their legions.

"Come on!" she called out, projecting her voice so it boomed through the clouds. "Keep moving!"

What _had _that been? They had had no idea that such a thing could happen? The power, the capacity... the enemy was cunning and powerful, yes, but that had just come from nowhere.

"I don't understand!" said Princess Sophia, gripping tightly onto her hand, voice muffled by the hand over her mouth as she tried not to inhale the dust everywhere. "I can't speak that language!"

"'Svoid!" Louise swore loudly, as she stared around the dust-filled corridors, and the bit of wall ahead of her which had just... ceased to exist. The little girl next to her blushed at the profanity, before another coughing fit hit her. Louise paid her no head. She did not _need _her own mind playing up on her right now, alien memories forcing themselves onto her, and she certainly did not need to be thinking of the idea that the nightmare woman had fought things like her.

"_What woman?_" Marisalon asked intently.

Louise's eye twitched. "Shut up!" she yelled. "Not you," she added to Princess Sophia. "C-"

Whatever she was about to say was completely lost in the sudden slump of rock from the ceiling above, solid stone parting like water. Down came fireballs, which sat in the air for a second before exploding in bright light and a noise which was more pain than it was sound. Marisalon's shouted warning was enough for Louise to get a hand up in front of her eyes, and so she managed to avoid being blinded for the second time in as many days.

Down came... giants, moving like they were underwater. That was the only way Louise could describe them, from what she could see through the dust and smoke. Hulking metal behemoths in excess of two metres tall, that looked like a giant bulked out suit of black-painted plate armour leapt up from the depths. "Golems!" she shouted, pointing at them, unleashing a torrent of silver sand howling from her finger which cut through the smoke and screeched into their metal armour. Holding tight onto the princess, she ducked into a vacant room, and realised too late that it was a dead end. With her free hand, she pushed the little girl out of sight, and took on a guarding position, polearm held so she blocked the entrance entirely.

They moved wrong. They were too... floaty when they jumped, like they were children playing underwater rather than hulking armoured figures carrying oversized weapons. Of the ones she could see, two had what looked like grotesquely oversized maces which they used in one hand, while another had some strangely shaped cannon carried over the shoulder which it levelled at her. On reflex, she blinked, with one of the new muscles in her head, and molten glass splattered out of her back, sand cascading back in to fill the hole in her and her dress as if it had never existed. A new thundercrack and the scent of storms filled the room – it looked like a hastily departed bedroom. That was a lightning cannon! She didn't know how those things worked, but she wasn't prepared to give them a second shot, and slammed the door shut, muscles straining as she dragged the heavy iron-cased trunk in front of it.

Something was bellowed in Albionese, some kind of order, and Louise looked around the small bedroom, looking for anything she could use. The bitter irony that this was the second time she had been attacked at night by armoured giants struck her, and she let out a barked laugh. 'What did you see?' she asked the neomah in her head.

"_Five... no, six of the armoured figures. Two carry those strange cannons, four with maces. The one who fired at you is doing something with it, and has retreated back. There are three smaller figures with them, wearing black masks and breastplates and carrying wandswords... I assume those are the fire mages,_" Marisalon reported clinically.

Right. Her thoughts were a whirl, but she had to seize control of them. They were outnumbered in here. She had to find the Prince Wales and Viscount Wardes, and they were triangle and square rank wind mages respectively, but there were at least three mages out there, and those golem armoured things.

Something slammed into the old timbers of the door, and they splintered and cracked; one of the maces carried by those giants, no doubt. Louise gripped the Staff of Destruction tighter, and waited. Boom, boom, boom, the blows went against the old wood, echoing the thunder of guns outside, and the girl's eyes narrowed, as she counted the time between impacts in her head.

The shining metal of the haft of her staff-glaive held in both hands, she lunged through the door just as the next blow came, the crystal cutting through the fractured wood like paper, and there was a satisfying scream from the other side. Louise yanked her blade back, and waited, blade set in a guarding position. See them try that again!

Too late, she remembered that they had used earth mages to breach the roof, and this meant that the door was not a checkpoint; not when it would cost them men – yes, the golem had screamed! It was alive? She was bought back to reality as a panicked yell from Princess Sophia was all that told her of the wall sliding aside. Wand in hand, the little girl sent a quick fireball through the gap, and although it was none-too-potent, the scream from the other side was enough to say that it had connected. The noises of pain were enough to say that it was not immediately lethal.

Stepping to the side, Louise brought her staff-glaive around in a cut to the man who tried to step through the hole in the wall, posture wide and low. Unexpectedly, the helmeted man stepped in, throwing his wand-sword into a desperate parry that took the staff-glaive on its haft. The deflected polearm sliced into the wall, and the girl grunted as she tried to get back into position, stepping back.

A barked word from the earth mage and the ceiling collapsed on her.

* * *

{0}

* * *

From his position on the windship, Captain Thompson of the Grenadiers looked down upon the maps of New Castle. He thanked the Founder for the perfect placement of the clouds – for all that he had to keep the windows sealed, or else the papers in this command room would have got wet. "Are we in position for another drop?" he asked the naval officer in the room.

"We're bringing her around," was the response. "We're fairing well; their anti-air is a mess, and the dragoons have their cannonades suppressed."

"Good," the balding man said. He idly fiddled with the straps of his blackened breastplate, and the windfall worn over it, as he thought. "Portsmer, inform headquarters of our status," he told his company's wind mage. "Inform them that I will be joining the men on the ground on the next drop, as we have captured the chapel, and will be using that as a base of operations for my assigned mission."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

{0}

* * *

"That _hurt_," said the Viscountess Wardes, her leg whipping around to hook around the earth mage's foot. She pulled, and he went down. Plaster and stone from the ceiling fell off her white-clad, dusty form, and she pulled herself to her feet, levering herself up with the Staff.

She was battered. She was bruised. There was blood dripping down from her forehead, and her dusty hair was getting in the way of her eyes. She should have been concussed from those blows to the head. There was the awareness that she probably was, but the pain didn't matter. Pain didn't matter; in fact, it made her think more clearly. And in the clarity, she crushed his wand hand under her foot, a corona of green light flaring as she turned the appendage into so much cooked meat.

Ignoring the screaming man on the floor she lunged, a second man falling with her glaive in his chest. The breastplates worn by these men were nothing to the Staff of Destruction, and another body hit the floor, greying flesh falling off crystal bones. Fire filled the corridor in front of her, and she leapt back into the room, eyebrows singing in the heat.

"Men! Forwards!" someone shouted in Court Albionese, and her heart soared at that. The rebels used the guttural harshness of Albionese, not the proper Brimiric language. "Drive these curs out!"

"We're in here!" she shouted back in her native High Tristainian. "Princess Sophia is safe!"

It was someone she recognised from the party yesterday. What had his name been? Earl something? The one with the ridiculous moustache. Well, he looked rather less silly now, for all that here was a breastplate over the top of his nightshirt. Dust covered his sweat-drenched face, and the foolish facial hair was singed, but his wandsword was bloodied, and an orb of fire floated above his hand. "Your highness?" he called out, keeping his sword and the orb of fire pointed in Louise's direction. The rebel earth made groaned on the floor; he was silenced with the wand-sword, his blood pooling on the ground.

"Sir Langdale?" the princess asked, poking her head above the bed. She was pale, shaking, and dusty, the cut on her face still oozing blood. "Yes!" She began to babble in Court Albionese, too fast for Louise to keep track of her words.

"How are things?" she asked the knight in Romalian, interrupting the babble. "Do you know where the Prince Wales or Viscount Wardes are?"

"Who, the..." the man paused, as all sound was drowned out by some vast explosion within the castle walls, "... the Tristainian? The King controls the throne room and most of the central keep... by the founder, you should have seen it. He just... shredded those damnable traitors. He's... he's using royal magic, the Founder's own blessing... and for that reason, we're trying to find the Prince Wales. Thank the Lord the Founder's safe, though; we need to get her back to her..." another explosion, "... to her father."

Louise took a deep breath, glad that unlike the others she seemed to not be affected by the dust. "What about the infirmary?" Louise asked, intently.

The knight blinked. "Water mages will..."

"Oh, not for me!" she said, one hand going up to tuck her hair back. The expression on the man's face seemed rather shocked at that announcement, and indeed he was probably right to be, considering Louise's battered state, the bruises and blood made more evident by that action. Louise did not care. Pain forged her into something stronger. "Viscount Wardes, my husband, went there last night. He's a square mage, and if we can..."

"We don't have it; it's one of the buildings close to the chapel," Sir Langdale said, his face dropping. "There's still fighting going on there, but... 'svoid, they just tore apart part of the walls, and there are those damnable grenadiers and men in windcapes dropping down from above. Those whoresons attacked at night, and their dragoons are picking off anyone who tries to take down the fliers like... well, like flies." There was a slowly dawning expression on his face which suggested that he was having doubts as to why he was reporting to a foreign girl in a wedding dress.

Louise gave him no time to pursue those doubts further. "In that case, take the princess to her father. I'm going to find my _husband_!" she said, wiping her forehead against her white sleeve and leaving it smeared red. "And your prince while I'm at it!"

Face locked into a snarl, forehead glittering, she marched out, polearm held at the ready.

* * *

{0}

* * *

King Jacomus turned his face up to the night's sky through the window, expression twisted in despair. "No sign of my son yet?" he asked Sir Langdale. "So be it, then!" he roared at the heavens, all traces of tremulousness gone. "So _be _it! Lord and Founder, you have forsaken us! Could you not even spare her? Must you ruin your chosen house out of spite? Out of whim? Is this a test of faith, or have you passed your favour to those traitors!"

Silent tears were running down Princess Sophia's face. "Daddy," she said, softly, "you're scaring me."

"I will not go into the night!" the old man screamed at the sky. "There will be no peace! No accession to your whim! You could not spare even my daughter, Lord, and so nothing will be spared! Nothing at all!" He coughed, breaking his speech, and he looked down, shoulders shaking. "Sophia," he said, wearily, "do not cry. You are the last princess of Albion. Such behaviour is unbecoming."

"But..."

"Silence. You will face this with no fear, for God has turned his face from us and we are doomed. So be it!" he roared, suddenly, the little girl jumping back, covering her hands with her ears. "So what you will do is you will lend me your strength. For each spell I cast, you will provide as much strength as you can. Lend me your fire..." the old man was silently weeping, too, the tears rolling down his face into his beard, "and we will see this corrupt, debased world _burn_, as the fires of Svar burn!"

Throwing back his head, he laughed, as down below the cannons sounded and the magic of the Republican mages lashed out to kiss the walls. "See this, Lord!" he screamed out, striding out onto the balcony overlooking the inner courtyard. "See my offering to you! See what my years of ill-gotten service have left me with!"

He fixed his eyes on a block of musketeers advancing through the breach. Their mage-commander was countering the efforts of one of the loyal fire mages, saving his strength. "Know the Night-Burning Mist, traitors!" he screamed with deranged glee.

King Jacomus I began to chant. So, shaking behind him, did his daughter, and his forty-year old bastard son. The secret words of power, the ancient rites propagating the Lord flowed from his lips, as he wove a tapestry of his own wind and earth, his daughter's fire, and his son's wind and water. As he chanted, the heavens themselves began to twist, an anticyclone forming above the central courtyards in the clouds above. His snow-white hair rose on end, and the dust from that damnable breach in the wall began to dance.

And it rained. The clouds condensed, and fell, leaving the night's sky above clear. The warm droplets of rain splashed down, and the king laughed. Laughed for the burning of the world and the end of all things. Terrified, his daughter fled from the madness of her father, running away from that terrible, choking laughter, heading deep into the castle just to get away from him.

For the rain was not water; no, it was not water. Warm oil rained down from the sky, down onto New Castle.

And all it took was one flame, and in this place, fire was not something there was a shortage of.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"Sir," a runner yelled, bursting through into the command tent back from the lines. "Sir, sir..."

"What is it!" snapped Lord Fairfax, face read. And then he paused, for the noise of war in the background had changed, and through the tent door, he could see red light. Staggering to his feet, the general of the Desbattionarianist forces sprinted to the cathedral and up the stairs, two at a time. And from the ruined belltower, he stared out in abject horror that the castle he was trying to capture.

It burned. Fire ran like water over the surfaces, licking from building to building, cascading down the walls and running down the hill on which the fortification stood. He could see men screaming and burning, and the detonation of stocks of gunpowder.

"That... _maniac_," he breathed. "That _sick _monster." The man beheld the capacities of royal magic, and was afraid.

And thus he was in place to see the miracle.

There was a blinding flash of purple light, and the fire rain stopped, becoming only water. The fires died out, for the oil they had been burning was only water now. New Castle was soot-charred and scorched, but it no longer rained oil.

"A miracle," said Sheffield, the woman from the Desbattion, from directly behind him. There was no reverence in that voice, no awe at the fortunate happening. "Bless the Lord."

"Yes," agreed Lord Fairfax, blinking his eyes to remove the tears. He dropped to his knees, hands clutched together. "Oh Founder, we thank you... get on your knees! Everyone! Pray! Pray for the grace of God!"

Unnoticed, a broken loop of paper fell from the Sheffield-woman's hand, dripping suddenly molten wax.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The air ignited with a sound that was so loud that it ceased to be noise, and instead became a physical force. The Viscountess Wardes felt her breath drawn out of her, as if a giant was sitting on her chest; the rebel fighters in the corridor were the same, stumbling in the violence. The heat washed over her, and she gasped, but there was something in her with rejoiced in that heat, and so she was able to keep advancing down this suddenly-sweltering stone corridor. And then she was upon them, staff-glaive batting away their bayonets to cleave through men and armour in scarlet gouts.

One cut and a man's head fell like a cabbage onto the ground. Another, and limbs flopped like some strange insect. Verdigris and brazen fire ignited around her as she killed and killed, a white-clad figure dancing through black-armoured men, and wherever she went, black became red, and died in grey forgettability. Fear and panic broke out, and men broke and fled, but still she killed, guided by the calm demonic voice in her head which warned her of her foes approach and noticed the attempt to flank her.

She knew where Viscount Wardes was. She couldn't explain how she did, but she _loved _him, and that meant that she knew where he was. Her heart was pulling her in the right direction. And if that direction led her through scared spearmen, trying to hold their ranks in the face of the oncoming monster, so be it. Her blade tore though stomach and spine, and she changed, becoming other. Men screamed in terror at that, as the hallway was filled with flaming cities and a great stalking titan, but they screamed more at the killer, the fearless killer.

The Viscountess Wardes was not very human any more. Her eyes were a sight into an inner sun, the blood running down her forehead sizzling and frying when it would have dripped into them, and alien, insectoid carapace covered all save her face. Raising one arm, she took a sword-blow on the carapace and cried out in pain, before she backhanded the man, delicate white gloves bulging with hidden armour. Green fire erupted from his caved-in helmet, and he went flying back. The killing resumed.

Her muscles were aching, her breath coming fast, and she felt hollow inside, but Louise was not yet out of it, and wrapped in green and brass flames, she lunged. The man before her fell, and she stepped back, her next swing cutting through the blade of the next Albionese solider. The man screamed and turned to flee. The girl with the inhuman eyes and the insectoid carapace under her wedding dress cut him down, and threw out a hand, letting flaying sands tear into the man levelling a pistol at her.

He screamed and dropped; she finished him off too, no feeling in the mechanistic killing. A twirl and a riposte bought the blade down upon a foe on the floor, and another crystallised skeleton joined the others.

For once, there was a moment of respite, and the pink-haired girl paused, leaning on her glaive. Her muscled burned, and blood wept from a gash along her cheek. But in the terrible illumination of the burning light around her, which filled this corridor with cold fire, she could clearly see that that was as nothing compared to the attackers who had tried to storm it. By the door, the twisted, warped skeletons lay stacked like firewood, greying flesh falling off crystalline bones even as she watched. Grains of silver sand littered the floor, painted red where men had been flayed by her hand. The tapestries along one wall were alight, from where she had let that fire from the mage pass though her, and the two greying halves of his body were either side of a deep gouge in the floor. The air was thick with smoke, but it could not disguise the perfume of copper and death.

So many dead. So many dead by her hand.

And the blood was everywhere. It ran down the blade of her staff-glaive to dribble over her fingers, staining those beautiful dainty white gloves. Her dress was splattered crimson, more like a butcher's apron than the royal wedding dress of Albion, and through the veil she looked at the world with a red haze. Even her slippers were drenched. But even as she watched, the enchantments of the dress did their work, and the blood was absorbed by the fabric, leaving no stains. It had been a passing amusement when it had been doing it to lesser stains. To this much blood, it became morbid, leaving her pure white in the midst of crimson carnage.

Louise began to laugh then, high and shrill. To think that but less than a week ago, the worst injury she had ever done to anyone was dislocating Montmorency's arm. Well, that and a few burns from miscast magic. Nothing on this scale. She was now a killer. And she was good at it. Intellectually, she knew she should be scaring herself, but her mind seemed completely incapable of feeling fear right now. There wasn't even the defence of panic. In the brass-and-viridian illumination which enveloped her, there wasn't even the room for that excuse. And there were so many of them here. So many... would she really be able to win against all of this?

That reminded her. Taking a deep breath, she reached into her dress, and pulled out the sealed letters that the Prince Wales had given her.

She paused for a second, staring at the name on the front. "I'm sorry, Henrietta," she whispered to the letter, imagining her friend's face there. "I'm sorry you won't be able to see what he says. I'll try... I'll tell you that I'm sure he was thinking of you."

The paper tore easily, flaring green, and was consumed completely. The ashes fell like snow, with a faintly heard scream right at the edge of the audible. And then she was moving again.

Corridors blurred around her in a gaze of blood and violence. One step, two steps, and an armoured soldier fell, severed at the waist. A third, and two serpentine gales of flaying sand whipped out into the armoured giants who had just broken through the thick wooden door at the end. Louise brought her blade back even before Marisalon could warn her, and the crack of lightning impacted into the wand-glaive, greasy white-blue sparks cascading off to fade upon the floor. The sparks were but another light in the radiance which surrounded her, and an inarticulate roar of anger escaped from her lips.

There were bellowed cries in Albionese from the faceless armoured figures as Louise advanced, and despite the way it was muffled by the armour, she could hear the panic and alarm. The only flesh they could see was the oval of her face; an insectoid carapace had absorbed everything else, and made her dress bulge unnaturally. Her mouth full of chisel-like white teeth was locked in a rictus snarl accentuated by the terrifying light of her anima, but even that faded compared to the sight of her eyes. They were no longer anywhere near human, but instead seemed to be a sight into some inner sun, an upswelling of cosmic power that was barely contained within a paper-thin vessel of flesh. One of the armoured men backed away, dropping the bulky lightning cannon – the size of a normal man's torso – which fell with a shattering noise, and turned to flee.

Slowly, Louise advanced, her glaive held in a ready position. Verdigris and brazen flames dripped like molten wax from her burning soul, to fall upon the tattered carpet and worn floor. Where they fell, it transmuted thread to brass and granite to basalt. The two grenadier guards, though they were armoured giants taller than any normal man in armour more fitted for dragons than men, were clearly afraid, holding back from the horror-eyed monster advancing upon them wreathed in cold flame.

The girl paused, and idly gestured at the head of one of the two with contemptible arrogance, the world around her hand warping to infinity and discharging silver sands. They blasted at the head of one of the two, streaking black-painted steel with silver scars. The response from the two was immediate. Crouching down, they bought their left arms up as if leading with an invisible shield, the injured one lagging behind in his response. And like that, in an odd, duelist-like pose, those monstrous hammer-maces in their other hands, they began to advance, moving away from the doorway while still crying out their warnings.

Wreathed in light, Louise burst into explosive motion. Against the nearer, unscarred one, she darted forwards, swinging her glaive down in a diagonal chop directly against the thick plate-armoured left arm of the grenadier. Her blade deflected off the centimetres of steel, but opened them up like a can as the crystal shrieked its way down the arm, trailing green fire. The armoured giant fell over backwards, shrieking in pain, charred meat and bone obvious through the opened-up armour. Louise went for the chop downwards to finish him off, and even Marisalon's warning wasn't enough to get her out of the way of the bull-rush of the one with the damaged helmet.

It felt like she had been kicked by a horse, and that was a familiar feeling to her, for when she was ten she had broken her arm that way. Those armoured brutes might have moved like bobbing jesters, as if they were underwater, but they still impacted like they were the mass of meat and metal they must have been. The strength to move in that armour, even if it was lightened by the windstones was astonishing. Rolling, tumbling, Louise only came to a stop when she hit the wall, feeling battered and bruised not just from the charge but from the impacts with the shaft of her polearm. She tried to pull herself to her feet, and only managed to bring the tapestry, shifting into into brass, down upon her. The stomp of the figures as they advanced was all too close, but there was no fear. In the light of her soul, there could be no fear for her.

The massive steel mace descended in an overarm sweep, clearly swung as hard as its wielder could. Louise rolled out of the way, shifting the motion to bring her to a crouch, and brought her polearm up in a clean slice. The blow severed the shaft of the mace and sent the metal head flying off into the wall. Flowing into a counter, she slammed the butt of the Staff of Destruction into the giant's breastplate, which folded like paper around the blow as if he had been hit by cannonfire. With a scream of exertion, the girl exploded up in a leap from her crouched position to stab down.

The blade of the Staff of Destruction slid into the already-armoured faceplate like a hot knife into butter, and there was not even time for a scream as the colourless fire consumed and transmuted the now-dead man. Her momentum ripped the weapon out through the top of the helmet, so it blossomed like a macabre flower and she landed behind the still-standing corpse. Foot after foot, she stalked towards the other grenadier guard, as they tried to pull themselves up in their massive armour. A lunge downward was enough to dispose of that foe as they struggled on all fours to pull themselves to their feet, and she continued on her way.

The door to her left, yes, up the stairs – she had to find the Prince Wales and Viscount Wardes. She took the stairs three at a time, her polearm shrieking as it scraped along the stone wall. Yes. All she had to do was find them, and then, given that she could still hear the crack and boom of the Royal magic, they could punch a way down to the ships and...

She stared at the full-wall window at the other end of the corridor, and at the fires which could be seen through it. Silently, she advanced, all the force, all the power gone from her despite her monstrous appearance. Explosions rippled outside and stone crumbled, but she did not blink.

And the citadel had... fallen.

It had fallen. The highest tower was ruins, and rebel soldiers in their black-painted armour were flowing in through the breaches in the wall. Every wall was blackened, and some of the lesser buildings were gutted by the fire which had tasted everything. A fresh gout of flame there, as a rebel triangle-class mage filled the barracks with fire which came blasting through the windows, a ranked mass of golems there. Gunfire crackled, but the booming cannonades of the walls were no more. There may have been fighting still going on, but it had fallen and it was over and Viscount Wardes had been like nothing compared to this brute force that had...

... no. No. No no no no no.

It couldn't have fallen. It wasn't possible. She didn't want it to fall. How could it have fallen? That wasn't possible. Viscount Wardes! He... he couldn't be dead! But the infirmary was burning and no! Impossible! Rebels couldn't win over the rightful royalty. They couldn't win over her fiancé. It wasn't possible. How could it be possible? Things didn't get to break the laws of what was and wasn't meant to be, smash them with their brute force! Not possible. Not. Possible.

Clutching her polearm tightly, using it as more of a walking staff than as a weapon, Louise staggered backwards. One hand went to her suddenly aching head; her mind felt like it was being torn asunder. Which was not possible. It must have been the injury from the ceiling collapsing on her finally taking its toll because it was not possible that laws and rules and the strong royalty over their weaker inferiors could be subverted like that and it was not possible and if it was possible then that meant that nothing mattered so it wasn't possible because things really mattered and things like this couldn't happened because they weren't possible so they couldn't be happening but they were and if they were then they were and they were and what had she done wrong and she had failed and she was a stupid useless zero who wasted the power of this sort of thing because if she hadn't been a stupid useless failure then it wouldn't have been possible for it to fall like this so it must be all her fault and she was stupid and useless and...

"_My lady!_" Marisalon shrieked in alarm. "_What are you doing? No, no, you're not a failure. You're beautiful and wise and strong, and you haven't failed here, no, please!_" There was raw emotion in the neomah's voice, but Louise completely ignored it as she stumbled away from the window, through a doorway, the fire around her already guttering and dying. "_Listen to me, my lady, please! I beg of you! You're not a failure! Keep on fighting!_"

"I am..." Louise whispered, softly, as she dropped down, discarding the Staff of Destruction. After all, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. She was useless and didn't deserve something like that, anyway. Tears began to seep from her burning, impossible eyes, which hissed into steam as she crawled away, not truly caring where she was going. She didn't deserve to show her face. There were people out there who were better than her, better than the stupid useless Zero who everyone hated. She was worthless, and she had always been. No matter of gift of power, no cosmic gift granted to her could ever make things better. She couldn't save him. She couldn't save anyone.

Marisalon said more things to her, but she blanked the neomah out. She was the flawed thing here. Flawed and useless and weak and selfish and stupid and _sinful_... yes, sinful too! It was all her fault. If she hadn't been weak and tempted Viscount Wardes to sin with her deceitful femininity, God would have smiled upon them and he would have been fine so it was all her _fault_...

The fires died around her. Her chisel-sharp folded back into her jaws, leaving only white, blunt useless ones in their place. The opalescent insectoid carapace fell off, leaving only ash over newly revealed weak squishy pale flesh. The sight into the inner sun guttered and died. And huddled into a ball, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, Viscountess of Vajours sobbed into her knees, tears soaking into her wedding dress.

She was still like that when the rebel soldiers found her hours later, curled up behind some bags in a storeroom. She did not protest or even respond as they approached.

"Well," said the woman in the black frock coat, untouched by the dust in the air. Something gleamed in her dead purple eyes. "This is interesting." She knelt, and casually picked up the Staff of Destruction. The blade erupted in colourless flame for a fraction of a second, before the fire cleared. Kneeling down with her new acquisition propped on her shoulder, she grabbed Louise's chin. The girl made little more than a desultory effort to escape, shuddering away from the cold gaze.

"How very... interesting," said the Myozunitonirun.

* * *

{0}


	14. 13: Fallen Titans

**A Green Sun Illuminates The Void**

**Chapter 13: Fallen Titans**

* * *

{0}

* * *

Cold rain beat down outside the carriage windows, dancing in the trackless swampland that surrounded the raised road. The horses were moving at a trot, their coats drenched, and their hooves threw up water that met the descending rain. Slumped against the carriage window, Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, Viscountess of Vajours, stared out into the rain with vacant eyes stewing in self-pity and misery. Her hands were chained in front of her, and there were two other Albionese noblewoman with her, survivors of the fall of New Castle.

There was a cough from one of the armed woman in the carriage. The dank-haired woman shifted, her leather buff jacket squeaking. Formally, she and her companions were 'chaperones', but their pistols and lobster-pot helmets put lie to any claim of protecting her virtue. No, they were desbattionarianist soldiers, like a traitorous version of Princess Henrietta's musketeers, and she had no doubt that they would shoot her if, by some means, she posed a threat.

It was not like that could do anything. Louise knew she could kill the two armoured women in less than ten seconds, for all that her hands were chained together, she was unarmed, and they were always sure to keep their weapons out of reach of the prisoners. They lived only at her tolerance. Them and the guards around them, and the soldiers who marched around them, and even those black-clad priests and priestesses she saw around.

But... what was the point? What would she do? Where would she go? She was somewhere in Albion, headed no doubt towards Londinium, and she had heard the beating of dragon wings out in the rain. She truly, honestly hoped their riders were suffering, but that did not change the fact that they could outpace and track her. And she'd at least need to get her hands on a weapon first before she could think of killing on a dragon.

That she could think that in all honesty, without a trace of self-mockery was disturbing to the girl. It was doubly disturbing that she only found it disturbing when she paused for a moment to consider it. And it was triply disturbing when she remembered that she was forgetting the flaying sands with that consideration, and she didn't even need a weapon.

But all of this was just her mind whirring in the background, trying to not think about what had happened in New Castle.

She had seen it fall. And something inside her had broken. It... it was madness, nothing less. And not the sort of madness that someone might chuckle at, not a laughable eccentricity, nor was it the madness that some people might think she possessed because she talked to something in her head.

It was pure, raw madness; the insanity that struck people when the blue moon Dorika was full in the sky. It had been irrational, all-consuming self-hatred.

And there had been that horrible, wonderful rush after the end of it. She had felt so _good _once the soul-crushing depression had left, and she had become able to care about the world again. It didn't matter that she was in chains; she had felt rested, in a way which she hadn't been with her disturbed sleep. That didn't happen normally. It hadn't happened when she had felt like that before. No, it never normally was _wonderful _after she had been so filled with self-loathing and knowledge of her own failure that – she swallowed – it bought back bad memories. There had been times, as she had become a teenager, and still could not cast the simplest spells, times when tutors had mentioned the world 'inexprimé' and times when the people in her class had... no! She wasn't to think of the long nights, the moments when she had considered that perhaps her family would be better off without a failure of a daughter to besmirch their name.

She would never go back to those times. Never again. But... they seemed to be a part of her. She... she could get new power, but it would always follow her. Never be free from it.

Louise sniffed, her chains rattling as she reached up to dab at her eyes with the corner of her sleeve. Slumping back down, she stared out the window again. She blinked. The rain was red, staining the earth where it fell and leaving tinted trains down the carriage window. The rich scent of coppery blood filled her nostrils. Well. She sighed. Another madness vision. Another intrusion on her mind. She really was mad.

"What's up with the weather?" the woman next to her asked, her clipped Court Albionese perplexed. There was a babble of Albionese from the guards, too, and the carriage seemed to be slowing down.

Louise blinked. Were other people seeing it?

"Clearly the Lord has turned his back on the traitors!" proclaimed the woman, glaring at the rebels. There was shouted Albionese back, through which Louise could just about understand a heavily accented order to be quiet, and the guards continued to talk among themselves.

'Marisalon?' she asked, tentatively.

"_Looks like omen weather, my princess?_" was the bored response. "_Not much. Look, it was only a short shower of blood._"

The girl blinked. She opened her mouth.

She remembered she wasn't meant to talk to the neomah living in her head in public, and closed her mouth again.

'What do you mean by that?' she thought.

She could almost feel the mild surprise off the neomah. "_Omen weather, my lady. It is a sign of a flaw in the world. Or, sometimes it happens back in the City, when trade goods react to their entry into a superior world._"

'So...' Louise paused, trying to put the sentence together. 'That makes it rain blood?'

There was a desultory yawn from Marisalon. "_Blood, fish, frogs, two-headed cows being born, red lightning, random fires, strange lights in the sky... nothing out of the ordinary._"

Louise shuddered. She hated frogs. And once again, she was reminded of just how strange her head-familiar could be. Sighing again, she stared back out of the window, as the light covering of gore was washed away by the rain and the republicans and her fellow prisoners panicked.

Yes, things were not as they should be, and the world was so very flawed. The neomah had that much right.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Villages and rice paddies started to dot the landscape of swampland and gorse as it rose onto more solid land. There squatted low, heavy stone buildings, many of which had wooden shacks built upon them. And from there, inevitably, the land rose to the city of Londinium. This city was no Bruxelles, and there was no inner city of white marble and straight streets rebuilt for aesthetics in its bleak grey stone and sullen red brick. Ancient and stinking, man-made hills of forgotten stone and slag sprawled across the landscape, growing their strange crop of buildings built wherever the men of early years wished. Many mage-built bridges reached over the sewage-choked river that crept its way across the dank landscape, and they too blossomed with buildings, crowding together to get away from the water which seemed to dominate this island of the skies. A pall of smoke hung heavy over this city, like a sullied bridal veil.

Oliver Cromwell looked over his city. And it was good. Lowering the spyglass from his eye, he had to resist the urge to dance. "They're almost here," he said to himself gleefully, at the sight of the semaphore flags raised over the Black Marsh gate station. "Almost ready."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The rattle of the iron-plated coaches as they clattered their way across the cobbled streets was aggravatingly loud. It was just another sign of the inferiority of Albion in the eyes of the Viscountess Wardes. The roads of Bruxelles were mage-smoothed, hardened stone proof against the wear and tear of life; no potholes marred their surface. The same could not be said of Londinium, and the ride was teeth-rattling. Had she been asleep, she would have been jolted awake rudely the first time the entire coach lurked that precipitously.

Of course, she had not slept at all throughout the entire trip. She realised part-way through that she simply wasn't tired, and that she could simply stay awake as easily as she might not sleep at noon of a normal day. This was convenient, in its own way, because it did mean she could escape the nightmares, but it had left her dreadfully bored. It was in the nights that she had most considered escape, but there had always been guards around, including flights of dragoons, and the melancholy and self-doubt that had followed the depression was always present.

Through narrow streets, escorted by armoured riders, the coaches proceeded, working their way up and around one of the hillocks which the city seemed to be built around. Mid-way up was where they stopped, the shouting of orders loud now that the clattered of the coaches had been silenced. Looking out the window, Louise could see a bleak edifice of dirty-white stone which seemed to be built into the hillside itself, looming and imposing. Hooded corpses swung from gallows in front of it, the spells no-doubt preserved by magic as to ensure that they would remain a demonstrative lesson. It was a not-uncommon fate for traitors in Tristain, too, and Louise recognised this place from books.

This would be none other than Traitor's Gate, the fortress entrance to the Tower of Londinium. The prison-citadel of the kings of Albion, built into the undercity itself, warded by fearsome magics and ancient murder-golems. Looking up, she could see what had to be the Pale Tower breaking the surface of the hillock, a bone-pale tower of stone that the dirt of the rest of the city refused to cling to, which rose, ragged and tooth-like into the grey sky. And now the last loyal nobles of Albion were to be sent there.

"_My fair lady, it would probably be disadvantageous for us to be imprisoned therein,_" Marisalon suggested, in a somewhat sardonic drawl.

'Stupid head-familiar,' the girl thought back, with an aggrieved jerk of her head. 'I know that.'

"_Now would probably be a good time to escape,_" the neomah suggested.

Louise pursed her lips. 'I know!' she thought. 'I'm waiting for us to get out of the carriages!'

There was a hum of pleasure from inside her skull. "_Good, most excellent. My princess... please, I beg of you, don't go crazy and start crying again. It would be disadvantageous for our shared health._"

The girl flushed red, even as the guard ordered her to stand. 'St-st-stupid thing!' she mentally snapped. 'Of course I won't!'

Louise was aware that her legs should be aching. They were not, despite the fact that they had been travelling for three days, sleeping in the coach still chained up. Whatever element of her biology meant that her muscles didn't cramp up, she was profoundly grateful for it. Her nose twitched in contempt at the clatter of chains that resulted from one of the noblewomen falling down as she tried to climb down from the steps with asleep legs.

"This way!" shouted a guard, in accented Court Albionese. Louise was pretty sure that was she had said, at least, and the pointing gesture was probably enough.

Well. Her hands were tied, yes, but she was out of the coach. Everyone else was tired, and carefully she rose up onto her toes, bouncing up and down as if she was trying to work stiffness out of her feet.

Her eyes flicked over the area, and the strange, alien violence-machine in her head took over her thinking. Tear the chains off, the green fire consuming them completely. Lunge and kill the guard beside her, take her weapon from the charred corpse. Kill the mage-officer, and the remainder of the guards with the sword. Kill...

... Louise shivered. No. She wasn't going to do that, not now. Not all that killing, so casually. It was different if they were directly threatening her, but she wasn't the sort of person who would just kill another person in cold blood because it was the most convenient way. She could walk through walls; she just needed to run for it, when she was close to a wall. Even an earth mage, if they parted the stone, would have to realise what she'd done before they could set chase. She just needed to wait for the right moment.

Indeed, a low-hanging cloud was rolling in from the east, heavy with rain. Standing in a line with the other prisoners, waiting while they unloaded the other carriages, Louise could not help but smile to herself. She had already seen how thick the fogs could get around Albion, and that would make it even easier for her to dart away. The desbattionarianists seemed to be aware of that, as they tried to hurry up the unloading process. She was fairly sure that they were not going to manage to do it in time.

"_It's wonderful, isn't it,_" Marisalon remarked. "_My lady, the building behind is appears to be a guard-house. If you head that way, you'll be able to arm yourself in there. If only we were not still wearing the wedding dress; it is lamentably white, and will be obvious to those who try to chase us. Perhaps it might be an idea to see if you might be able to find some kind of jacket or shirt in there, that you could slip over the top, and maybe a helmet. It is probably too much to hope that we might be able to avoid them long enough to be able to change completely._"

'Good idea,' Louise thought, feeling rather pleased with how her head-familiar was making herself useful. 'I don't want to lose this dress, though. It's the royal wedding dress of Albion; I should protect it with my honour. It was lent to me.'

She thought she heard the neomah sigh, but any further comments were lost in her surprise. The red-uniformed guards who had emerged from Traitor's Gate were being reinforced, and the reinforcements were not just men. Brutally sleek golems, which put the ones which Guiche back at the academy could produce to shame, separated from the off-white stone of the Gate. The androgynous giants which looked almost like a wax doll partially melted in the heat were carrying weapons made of the same substance as their bodies, swords the size of a small child and shields which upon closer inspection were grotesquely twisted hands, and they moved to surround the entire group. Louise could already see what would happen if any of the prisoners made a run for it; it would take them within range of those brutal swords, to be cut down.

And then she gasped, as the next man was manhandled from one of the coaches. He was not like the others, chained by the hands; a prison-golem encased him, surrounding all his body with iron under the control of another and leaving only his head exposed. And that head, that bruised, beaten head with its mob of unwashed blonde hair matted with clotted blood, was the Prince Wales. He was alive, Louise saw that much in the glinting of her eyes, before six of the golems surrounded him like a living wall.

"Behold the traitor, Cearl of the House of Stewart," a mage-officer cried out, in Court Albionese.

"_Interesting,_" Marisalon breathed. "_So they took him alive... most interesting. My lady, we should consider how best to take advantage of this, and... oh._"

Another figure in a prison-golem was manoeuvred out of a different carriage. And this walking iron prison was much smaller, smaller even than Louise herself. Princess Sophia was sobbing silently at the sight of Traitor's Gate and the corpses hanging outside it, the kind of tears which could only come from having wept day and night until one's voice was lost. More of the gate-golems moved to surround her, and they marched off too.

Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, Viscountess of Vajours froze. She let out a single breath through clenched teeth. Once again, the fury was back. The killing fury, the one which had carried her through the burning castle of New Castle.

"_Please, my beautiful lady, please. Against such numbers, without your blessed spear, chained up as you are, now is not the time to fight,_" the neomah interjected hastily. "_Save your energy, then extract your revenge. Please, I beg of you, use that wonderful mind of yours as well as your strong, brave heart. You won't be able to reach her in time should they seek to do her harm._"

For all that they were traitors, for all that they were sinners under the eyes of the Lord and the Founder, she had not expected the rebels to treat a little girl like that. The message that they were conveying by marching her like that – unable to even control her own limbs – into Traitor's Gate, festooned with unrotting corpses, was all too clear.

She couldn't leave the princess alone. She just... couldn't. It was something as alien to her as suicide, or betraying Princess Henrietta, or acting against her family. Even the idea of attempting it made her feel sick to her gut, an intolerable burning churning and boiling in her. She glanced over at the shackled form of the Prince Wales. No, peculiar. There wasn't that same bone-deep certainty there.

And that meant that she would have to let them imprison her, rather than breaking out now. That was sickening in its own right. But Princess Henrietta would not have given her this mission if she had not thought that she could do what was necessary, and for all that this was somewhat outside the parameters of what had been expected, and – the girl swallowed – for all that there was no sign of her husband here, which might mean that he was dead... for all of that, she would try to do her best to complete the mission.

Or at least what she felt to be the best spirit of the mission, given that she had destroyed the letters she was meant to bring back to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Up steep stairs and through narrow twisting corridors she was taken, and every step she took she used to try her best to memorise the way in and out and how things might be protected. Marisalon pointed out various defences; the neomah seemed rather familiar with at least some elements of fortress design, and her remarks that a certain hallway was designed to be flooded with acid or burning oil were a welcome warning. At some point, the architecture shifted suddenly, the corridors becoming wider, and the stairs were replaced by great clanking cargo lifts, powered by donkeys whose braying was an oddity among this place of clean white stone.

One by one, the noble prisoners were split off, and escorted to their captivity. When it came to her turn, it was all that she could do to glare at them rather than kill the red-coated guards right now, for they had grabbed her arms hard enough to bruise. Only the knowledge that she did not yet know where Princess Sophia was held her back.

The room which was to be her cell was bleak, but not entirely inhumane. Though the walls were painted a simple white, and the magelights embedded in the ceiling and walls so a prisoner might not use them as a tool, there were at least rugs on the floor, and a decent bed. The room itself looked like it had once been larger, but had been partitioned off by a wall which had cut through the middle of the room, with a door plastered over. A sizeable window let through slightly blue-tinted light; it looked like it was the same stone which made up the outside wall, transmuted by magic until it was as clear as fine glass – at least that was Louise's noble-born opinion on the subject. And the main door to the cell which rattled shut behind her was massive, solid iron, and slid along tracks rather than being hinged.

"_Rather pathetically done for a prison,_" was Marisalon's personal opinion. "_I occasionally had dealings with a soladity which carried out such things... although it was not a prison, no, of course not, because the right to enact punishment like that is the sole preserve of the Priests of the Endless Desert, may her sands flow on for evermore. Of course, they were sensible, and simply sealed the cell shut once the prisoner had been thrown in, though of course there was a Cecelynian glass window which you could use to watch them dance when the floor underneath them was heated. Oh, how amusing that was. And they had other, more expensive options for imprisoning one's foes who one regrettably needed alive, not to mention the bespoke options like the many torturers they had on staff, and..._"

'Marisalon. Shut up.' Her head-familiar did occasionally remind her of the fact that she was not human. Although... come to think of it, that heated floor thing was one of the ways that heretics had been made to repent. She was fairly sure that such things had been mentioned in history books she had read.

"_My lady, I did not think that you were squeamish about due punish... oh, right._" The neomah sounded bashful. "_Oh yes, we are imprisoned ourselves. See how comfy the bed is._"

It was remarkably comfortable, Louise found, as she collapsed face-first onto it. Considerably more comfortable than that miserable bed on the ship days ago, and it went without saying that it was better than spending days on a coach. By her measured opinion, it was less comfortable than her bed at the Academy, but it was not intolerable.

Louise blinked, mind wandering. How would she disguise the fact that she did not need to use the chamberpot? Surely they'd notice at some point?

And Wardes was almost certainly dead. In the silence, it struck her like a hammer blow. He had not been among the captives, and she had seen the infirmary burning. He had said that he had gone to sleep there, to try to recover his strength, and she had seen how weak he had seemed. Had he even woken up? Had he suffocated in smoke or... or... or had he burned to death?

A sob escaped her chest. Her husband dead, without even a night together in the eyes of God. Dead on her wedding night, the ring on her finger the only proof that she was married. And... and if she was pregnant, from that night on the ship, then the... the f-father of her, of their child was dead too.

"_My lady, my lady,_" Marisalon began. "_At least you do not know if he is dead, yes? He may have escaped, may have evaded them. After all, did he not have that vanishing magic with the lightning that he used to get into the castle in the first place._" The neomah paused. "_He may be coming to rescue us right now. Although we should probably not count on it, because dependency on such an uncertain chance would be weak and foolish if we can escape on our own, yes?_"

"He won't b-be coming," Louise whispered into her pillow, hugging it tight. "D-d-did y-you see how much the... the lightning transport cost h-him the first time? He w-wouldn't have been able to c-cast it when he was that t-tired. Or run away... n-not that he would do that. Which means he's... dead." She swallowed. "And I'm a w-widow at age sixteen," she added, an edge of hysteria in her voice. "A widow still in her w-wedding dress."

The girl pulled herself upright, wiping her eyes on the white fabric, which absorbed the moisture. "They'll pay," she breathed. "All of them." Her hands were balled into fists, her nails squeezing tight into her skin. The sharpened brass no longer drew blood, and she did not feel any discomfort.

"_My lady, it would be best if you did not make your sacred vows of undying vengeance out loud,_" the voice in her head suggested. "_I can hear men outside._"

The large iron door grated its way open, and Louise repressed a sigh at the sight of drawn swords. In deference to the fact that she was apparently a problem, in that she was not Albionese, the swords were not raised in a hostile position. And perhaps the fact that she was... petite meant they were even lower than they should have been, although given she lacked a wand, she really wondered what they thought she could do to them. Any further thoughts, however, were derailed by the sight of what could only be a maid behind the guards, carrying a basket of what she was fairly sure to be folded clothes.

"She is your maid," said one moustached guard, in very heavily accented Low Tristainian. "She will be looking after the clothes and the washing and such like."

Louise nodded, her anger temporarily averted. She had not quite realised how much she had wanted fresh clothes and a wash until this moment. This way, at least, she could get out of the wedding dress, which... well, there was a creeping scent of metal around it, which suggested that at some point, the cleaning spells on it had been overwhelmed by the blood she had shed. "Hot water?" she asked. "For cleaning and the like?"

"It is here, now," he said, letting the second woman past him. She was carrying a steaming copper basin with her, towels over her arms; not enough for a bath, but she would at least be able to clean everywhere when she was out of this dress. The man cleared his throat, catching Louise's attention again, which had drifted hot water-wards. "Please be done within one hour. The maids will be in here, with you. Treat them bad, and they will not come again."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The click of shoes behind him jolted Cromwell from his paperwork. The astrologers at Greenwich were reporting strange omens in the stars, and present-tellings which were systematically wrong; it was just another hassle in his day. He had not heard the door open, which meant that this could only be one person. Shuffling his papers, he put them down with a cough and turned around, trying to keep calm. "So, how is it?" he asked Sheffield enthusiastically. "Your messages were accurate?"

"Yes, Lord Protector," the woman said. Her black frock, masculine in its cut, was spotless despite the days she had spent on the road. Even her boots were polished. But then again, that was one of the things that one could always say around Sheffield; she was almost painfully neat. The only thing that broke the line of her garb was the long sword slung over her back, black cloth wrapped around the hilt. "Both Prince Cearl and Princess Sophia have now been confined within the Pale Tower."

"Wonderful!" Cromwell let out a chuckle, a half-giggle. "Oh, this is just wonderful!" he announced, pulling himself to his feet, and striding over to one of the cabinets. "Blessed be Lord and Firstman," he announced, retrieving a book bound in green leather. "Such bounteous success shows that God himself supports the Reclamation! Just a little more, and we'll have those vile elves facing the unified forces of all of Halkeginia."

"Yes," Sheffield said, folding her gloved hands in front of her. "You will note among the lists of the other captives, there is one Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière. According to her, she is the Viscountess Wardes. She is wearing a wedding dress, which matches with her story that she married the Viscount Wardes the night of the successful assault."

The man nodded, a bobbing, jerking motion of his head. "Yes, I saw. Um. No sign of the viscount, is there?"

"There is not. Neither body nor capture."

"Damnation," Cromwell said, snapping the book shut. "He would have been concrete proof of a greater interference by the Tristainian state in our internal affairs. Rostrum warned us he'd be there... was there even any sign of his presence? Could that shifty Tristainian rat have been lying to us? And what more could he been lying to us about? Can we trust anything he said; you said he was reliable!" the man said, working himself up.

"Unlikely. I conversed with several prisoners. They confirmed his presence. They noted he looked ill." The pale-skinned woman paused, shifting slightly. "If so, he may have been in the infirmary, and that was razed by our fire dragons."

The man massaged his temples, tucking a stray dark-blond hair back. "The fortunes of war, eh?" he said, after a moment. "To be thwarted by... Lord, gut-cramp or something. Well, does Madam de la Vallière have the letter Rostum said she has?"

Sheffield's face twitched, for a moment, though what emotion flashed across it could not be read. "I oversaw her capture. She was hysterical and sobbing at the time; I could find no message or papers upon her body."

Cromwell rolled his eyes. "Damn the Prince Wales and his paranoia. Well, it may be a verbal message. Find out what it is, while we ransom her back to Tristain."

"You do not wish to do that," Sheffield said, in her strangely accented voice. "Inform Tristain, and they will ask of her. And if it is known that we have her, it removes certain options. Moreover, it was foolish of you to treat her as a normal prisoner. I will take full duties for her custody."

Cromwell gnawed on a nail, pacing up and down. "Yes, you're right, of course," he said, after due deliberation. "We need to get proof of Tristain's complicity in more than sticking their fingers into Albion. Tristain, and more so, the Princess Henrietta. We need to be able to pin it on her, personally, and best be able to link it to some adultery or love for the Prince Wales or that damnable marriage to the Germanian Emperor will go ahead and the Iron Dragon will have Tristain in his claws. And he's a jealous man, and not likely to share... or care about the necessity of reclaiming the Holy Land from the elves."

Cromwell had reached the balcony by now, and had his fingers grasped around it knuckles white. "Sheffield," he snapped, after a moment staring out over the city, "I give you full authority to get that proof we need. It would be better if it's willing, especially if she can be reasoned with to understand what terrible, terrible people the House of Stewart and that wrinkled slug Jacomus were and become a friend of the Reclamation..." he took a deep breath, "... but this? This is second only to your duties in the court case. I'm giving you full authority over this."

"Thank you, Lord Protector," the dead-eyed woman said in her monotone, inclining her head slightly. "Your will be done."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The hours ticked by in tedium, and Louise endured. Once the maids – who had spoken nothing but Albionese – had left, there was nothing much to do. At least, though gestures and speaking loudly and slowly, they had helped her remove the wedding dress and get into something lighter and easier to move in, and, likewise, she had ordered them to let her keep the white gown and they had obeyed her. It was at least something that her noble attitude could penetrate even the language barrier. The light blue dress and skirts she was wearing was rather more comfortable and easier to move in, and did not have a faint smell of blood. Now she was waiting on her bed, her attention split between watching the city outside the transparent-stone window, and trying to read some of the Albionese books and pamphlets which had been left inside the room.

She traced her finger over the words of the latest one.

**BY THE DEŞBATTION, IN THE NAME OF LORD AND FIRŞTMAN**

_A Broadtale for the Taking and Wellholding_

_of Cearl of the Houſe of Ştewart_

_badly called the Prince Wales_

_Alſo being a wrongſwrit for thoſe who help, underwrite, or otherwiſe ſecondact him in any ways whatſoever_

_Whereas Cearl of the Houſe of Ştewart, ſon of the badlordiſh King Jacomus I, acting with manyfold others of the Albioneſe folk, has in an unfolkiſh and foul ſeeming moved into this folkplace and broken its wellneſs, acting with landwarcraft ſtrength againſt the ſtrengths of the Holy Freemenland of Albion. Whereſoever he goes, he ſhall be greatfollowed, and all hardworkings ſhall be made towards taking him alive. For the ſpeedy taking and wellholding of ſuch a faerful folkfoe, the Deſbattion does aufgabe and bid all ſheriffs of Albion, whether townmanniſh, landwarcrafty or otherwiſe, and the good men of this folk, that they make all hardworking haſte to act to thwart, forſeal, and otherwiſe hinder his wrongdoing deeds, and furthermore upon his taking he ſhould be bought forthwith and with no ableave before the Deſbattion, being ſure to take away his wand from his ſelf. It is avowed that he ſhall have a fair and fairweighted trial, ſuch that his wrongdoings againſt the men of Albion be rightly ſeen, and hencewith, abovethinking the greatneſs of thoſe wrongdoings, the ſinpain ſhall be death by hanging._

_If any ſelf ſhould knowingly forbide the Prince Cearl of the Houſe of Ştewart, or any who underwrite or adhere to his goals, or does not behold to others the places of their abode or being, if it is in their might to do ſo, the Deſbattion makes known that they ſhall henceforth be taken to partake of his wrongdoings and to underwrite in them, and they too ſhould be took, to be bought before an ſheriff of the law, to be ſinpained as is right and apt. Hardworking ſearch and beſt makeworkings ſhould be made to defeat any ſtrengths he raiſes, whether unfolkiſh or coinhired. The Deſbattion and the Holy Freemenland of Albion does hereby make known that whoſoever does take the ſelf of the Prince Cearl of the Houſe of Ştewart and ſhall bring him, or cauſe him to be bought to the ſheriffs of the Deſbattion, ſhall have given to him, or them, as a coingift for ſuch good deeds, the coinholding of One Thouſand Five Hundred Pounds, and the good ſeeming of all ſheriffs, townmanniſh and landwarcrafty, of the Deſbattion._

_Written and made known at Eaſtdeacon_

_Ordered by the Deſbattion, that this Broadtale ſhall forthwith be publiſhed and printed._

_John Brightſtone, Cler. Deſ._

With a disgusted sigh, she threw the pamphlet asides. Founder! Albionese was a pain to read! For all that the accent might make it completely indistinguishable gibberish, it was at heart a Brimiric language, even if it was packed with commoner words which, worse, were different from Low Tristainian. But there were enough words which were different that she got a migraine from trying it, not to mention the stupid typography. Clearly, being a bunch of inbred traitors on a wet miserable stupid island did terrible things to their printing skills. It... it was probably for the best that they knew how to operate a printing press, rather than just finger-painting the words in.

That fact that this was nothing less than a reward poster for the Prince Wales, and was its own way a gloating sign of their victory could did not help.

Again she looked out the window, towards Londinium. The nearest city-hillock was lit in brazier-light, and the clouds were low overhead, veiling the moons. It was a dark night out there, and that was good. She was only going to scout out this citadel now, at night, when the guards would likely be less watchful. See if she could find out where they were keeping Princess Sophia, and, better, if they were keeping wands here that she might arm the other captive mages with.

Louise breathed out slowly in a faint hiss.

She flexed a mental muscle, and walked straight into the door.

"Ow," was what she managed from down on the floor. On one hand, it didn't hurt as much as walking into the door should have. On the other hand, it was a door. And it had not let her through.

Door weren't allowed to do that! Not once had that trick failed before!

Which meant that this was a trap she had walked into. Warding against spirits to prevent their divine allies from leaving through the walls, and by sealing off the underground passages their Dragonblooded would not be able to get messages out by the wind currents. This was more than just a Lintha naval base; they had some kind of greater ally, she thought. Lit in the pink-gold light of the dawn, she stared around the underground mooring for just a second, before she began barking out orders. If this was a trap, she was going to wait here to trigger it, because she _had _to find who was behind this.

Louise moaned in pain. Now her head was hurting far more than it had when it had collided with the wall. That thing should get out of her head and stop giving her flashbacks! Even if it had actually been useful for once!

"_What thing, my lady? I cannot help unless you tell me._"

"Shut up!" the girl groaned, screwing her eyes shut to block out the too-bright pink gold light that washed out everything in the cell, leaving it pale and faded. If she just ignored it, it would turn out not to be real, and since Marisalon couldn't see it, it meant it wasn't real! Picking herself up, she shuffled over, and walked into the wall, falling down on her bottom. Which hurt just as much.

... why was she using the voice in her head to tell if she was seeing things or not, anyway?

Louise screamed, as loud as she could, lurching to her feet. The rage and frustration and unhappiness came out in one torrential cry of misery, and she punched the wall as hard as she could. Green fire burst around her fists and her skin as she struck again and again. Plaster burned and ignited, the entire facade of the wall falling away in white ash, and its faint screams were lost by the mad bellow from the Viscountess Wardes. She punched again and again, even as carapace forced its way out of her skin and a crown of bone horns tore its way from her temples and the verdigris-and-brass fire ignited in a bonfire which washed over the entire room. She punched until her carapaced hands were bloody and broken, until the strength born of rage and power was gone, until she could not even call upon the strength to wreath her hands in the light of the green sun.

The wall still stood. The plaster and paint had burned away, and there were cracks in the strange bone-white stone which lay under the wall, but it stood. The nimbuses of green fire had not consumed the stone as they had the paint and plaster; no, the wall had cracked and bent rather than ignited. There were fist-deep pockmarks on it, wounds she had opened in it, but it remained sound. And... and she wasn't strong enough. She was too weak to break the wall.

Tears rolling down her face from both frustration and the pain in her hands, Louise slumped to the floor. If she had the Staff of Destruction, she could have done it, she was sure of it... but they'd taken that sacred trust from her. She just felt hollow and empty and worthless.

Exhaustion wracked her, and slumped down in the corner, she sucked in a gasping breath. Clasping her bloodied, broken-carapaced hands together, she bit her lip. So this was what she got for delaying, yes? For not killing guards when she got the chance? "Lord," she whispered. "Founder. Malfeas, King of Kings. I beg of you, give me strength. Give me power. Let me make them pay. Let them suffer. They all deserve to die." Her blood stained the front of her dress, and she whimpered in pain from the most-likely broken bones in her hands, but she did not unclasp her hands. "Give me vengeance and might, and I will send them to face your judgement, for their sins. Fire, wind, water, earth, hear my plea. Dread Malfeas, holy Cecelyne, generous Kimbery," she said, dredging names she had heard Marisalon mention, "give me the strength to make them all pay."

In weariness and pain, she fell asleep, still curled up in a ball in the corner. And as she slept, she dreamt, and those visions were not unlike her reality. In her dreams, she was imprisoned within this very cell, white plaster and bright mage-lights everywhere. She raged and she screamed, and the pain in her hands grew and grew as she beat her hands into the walls. All she managed to do was break away the plaster, to reveal the brass underneath, and shake the lights so they burned green.

"And so you are outcast and forbidden, anathema to all, bound five days away from the world for your sins," proclaimed a voice which burned like molten gold in her voice. "So begins your endless sentence!" With those words, the last of the plaster fell away from the walls, leaving her imprisoned inside this green-lit brass room, and from the window, she gazed out upon endless silver sands, under a black starless sky.

"Marisalon!" she screamed at the world. "Get in here!"

No scantily clad neomah made her appearance.

"Marisalon!" Louise screamed, an edge of panic in her voice.

"silly little zero," said her shadow, her own voice smug. "she's scared of us when we're like this. as she's right to be. we both know she likes to act like she's rather more powerful than she is, don't we, my little shadow?"

"I don't need to believe my shadow's talking to me!" the pink-haired girl yelled, whirling. "Th-there are enough things in my head already! Neomah and... and m-madness visions and n-nightmares and..." she gasped for breath.

"i've always been here, little shadow," said the tar-black presence, impossibly creeping under her to stand behind her again. Its amorphous hands crept along her body, two-dimensional appendages dark against her dress, squeezing and pressing and feeling.

"St-stop that!" the girl said, blushing bright red. "Get off me!" She tried to squirm out of the shadow not-her's grasp but could not step away from it. It was always just behind her.

Her own voice moaned in pleasure behind her. "you're enjoying this, though, aren't you. just like you enjoyed the viscount that night on the ship. think of how much fun you could have had all those times you passed over, because of what? shame? look at what monmon said, and how everyone always lies, doesn't follow the rules. you want this, enjoy it, why do we deny ourselves something we enjoyed?" There was the disquieting feeling of her own lips on the nape of her neck. "and i'm not something trying to tempt you into sin. i'm you, and i've always been you. you've thought all these thoughts before. remember when we rolled around on the bed on the ship, pretending that the pillow was wardes, even when we were refusing to face him in person?"

Louise bit down on her lip, beet-red, as the shadowy hands caressed her chest, hands doing exactly what she had, in the secret times, dreamt of. "Get. Off. Me," she hissed, something within her head transmuting shame into rage.

"oh, good girl," the shadow not-her laughed. It did not, however, stop its ministrations. "this is a prison, the pleasure you're feeling. another constraint." Its voice dropped. "never tolerate your own constraint. never let other people tell you what to do. you want to get away from my hands? from this cell? then _escape_."

Teeth bared, hands flaring with green fire, the pink-haired girl levered her fingers under her own shadow. "Get." The flame around her grew brighter and brighter. "Off."

Laughing in her own voice, her shadow peeled away, flitting behind her where she could not see it save out of the corner of her eye. "use that hate of confinement," the not-her said, giggling. "channel it, and get out of this jail. all you need is practice."

She awoke not to laughter, though, but to the sound of rattling metal and the pain in her hands.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Groggily, Louise stirred, the dream world morphing back into the world of waking in her eyes, such that she almost felt she was still asleep. But, no, the view out the window was one of blue skies, and the walls were plaster once more – save the one she was slumped against. Her muscles ached slightly from the uncomfortable sleeping position, but less than they should have. And fortunately the alterations had blended back into her skin as she slept. It would have been hard to explain such things to the cluster of clerics who had entered.

"_My lady, the door is..._"

Louise didn't even need to think. Like some kind of feral beast, she unfolded from the ground, arms slamming back into the wall to push off. Her blow was brutal in its simplicity, her fist bought around in a too-fast blow right into the head of the man which shattered like pottery. Exactly like pottery, in fact, for the face of the thing which had seemed like a man burst apart in a shower of porcelain, violet lightning accompanying her burst of green flame. She let her momentum carry her shoulder first into the next man, ignoring the pain in her hands, and slammed the man against the interior wall, plaster cracking behind him. Like a ragdoll she swung him around, into another man, and both broke.

Two more things that looked like men went to grapple her; she simply sprung right through them. There was a woman in front of the door, and grinning like a mad thing, the pink-haired girl jabbed at her stomach.

The woman caught her hand in her own gloved hand, and squeezed like a vice. Louise froze for a second. The sudden pain as a too-strong grip crushed her injured hand and the bones grated against each other was overwhelming, and she could not help but whimper. Then both she and the woman acted. Louise went low, hooking her leg around the woman's leg and pulling the pair of them down to the floor. Black-gloved hand balled into a fist, the woman punched her in the solar plexus, but the blow met something which felt more like plate than a ribcage. The air forced out by the impact erupted as a laugh.

Rolling over on the ground, the two women brawled by the door. The slight, petite girl was for her lack of size clearly the stronger, and bought her knee up between the other woman's legs. The resultant flare of green fire was accompanied by a scream of agony, but any triumph was cut short as four black-coated men together grabbed Louise and dragged her back into the cell.

The first was shattered by a blow which tore his clay head clean off his shoulders. The second had an arm grabbed, and a foot applied to his torso. The third was smashed to shards by the arm of the second, the brand of crossed-swords igniting on her forehead like a beacon. The fourth was reduced to broken pottery by a flurry of green-flaring punches to the torso. And she was free again and the woman on the floor was drawing an odd-looking pistol and she was jinking, her body already falling apart into sand and...

... the pistol flashed in purple light, right through the pillar of sand, and it was like she had gripped a hot poker, only the hot poker was through her abdomen. The figure of Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière recoalesced from silver sand, the dress over her abdomen the centre of a growing spread of red. That... how... she...

She stopped moving, because the woman on the floor, a purple brand burning on her forehead in counterpoint to the crossed swords, had the pistol pointed at her forehead. It wasn't a normal pistol, by any means. It resembled some hybrid between a wand and a pistol, a lattice of barbs unfolded spider-like around the central wand-like spike.

And it had the sheen of the shaft of the Staff of Destruction. The same odd-reflecting, silvery gleam that was hard to explain without having seen it before.

"_Those runes,_" Marisalon breathed. "_They're the First Speech. Mayosinitonirunu. At least she is not a Chosen of the traitor-Maidens..._"

Breath rasping, the black-coated woman pulled herself up, encumbered by the sword slung over her shoulders. Her forehead was shiny with sweat, her breath rasping, but the hand with the pistol might have been carved from marble for how steady it was. One leg was convulsing, the coat around her inner thigh burned away to reveal bloody burned flesh all along her inner thigh. The room was filled with the sound of the two women gasping in pain, the floor littered with broken pottery shards and black uniforms.

"Sit down," the woman grated through clenched teeth. "Sit _down _familiar spirit-get, or I will put you down."

Slowly, Louise made her way backwards, both hands clutching her gut. Founder, it hurt so much. It was more than she could repress and push away, and the pain in her hands was flaring again from the impacts against so many hard heads. Her head swam, but she forced herself to not stumble. She wasn't going to show weakness in front of this... this... her eyes glinted green.

Oh.

This... this _thing _was more powerful than Viscount Wardes was. And that was _impossible_, because there was no such thing as a pentagon-class mage. And the way she tasted... it was wrong. It was something akin to the way that Henrietta's bodyguard had seemed, but while she had been like the night's sky, chill and fresh, this 'Mayozinitonirunu' tasted of stars and blackness and vast, unconquerable depths. Louise shuddered at the cloying feel of those powers, and let out another pained gasp. "You're... not human," she managed.

"Neither... neither are you," the woman said, propped up against the door-frame, her strange accent thickening through the pain. "And you're..." she swallowed, "not a mage, either. That rune... I cannot read it, it is different. And these wounds... this will be very painful to heal."

"Who are you?" Louise's eyes widened in shock, for she recognised the sword slung over the woman's back. It was the same weapon Viscount Wardes had carried, she was sure of it. And that meant... "H-how did you get my husband's sword!"

"I am Sheffield," the pale woman said, ignoring the other question.

That was a lie, the dissonant grating in Louise's head proclaimed, and her nose wrinkled up. "Tell me how you got that sword!" she shouted,

"No," the woman said, clenching her jaw. "And again, you show..." she paused, gasping for breath, clearing holding her arm steady only through act of extreme will. "You show... your nature, spirit-get. Mages cannot do that."

The pink-haired girl glanced down for a moment. The accusation still hurt, even if it was true. The pain in her abdomen also hurt, she thought, staring the blood oozing out between her fingers. "What... what are you, _then_?" she asked.

"The same question could... could be asked of you. I don't know which spirit whelped you," the dead-eyed woman wheezed. "Your seeming does not resemble any other I know of, but I suspect if I keep you here, I will discover it when the parent comes looking for their bastard. And I will find your master, too, when they search for you."

"H-how dare you!" Louise spluttered, stuttering more out of the sheer rage within her than the pain in her abdomen. "M-my m-mother has always been faithful and you...you wouldn't be saying that if she was here! And I'm not a familiar!"

There was a glint of amusement in the strange woman's eyes, as she gasped. "Ah. You do not know who your parent is. Well, that will be something to look into. But I have you within my mind, and I can see that you are as powerful as you can be – so much power, so young; you must favour your parent. But even if you lose your mortal flesh, even if you shuck your skin, the walls will still hold you. Please, feel free to do so." Sheffield smiled, a sick, slow creeping-up of the corners of her mouth. "I like spirits. They can be so... cooperative." She was helped to her feet by another one of the dark clerics, hand still steady for all that she was hunched over, and backed away until she was away from the door, two figures moving in to obstruct any attempt to reach her while still leaving lines of fire open.

Eyes darting from left to right, the girl desperately tried to think of how to get away from this horrible, inhuman woman. Sheffield believed what she was saying; she was telling the truth. Her mind came up blank; against her, she was _scared_. There was something deeply malevolent about this... this _thing _in the shape of a woman, and... and she _hated _her. The fact that the horrific burns which led the dark-dressed woman to favour one leg were merely along the inner thigh, Louise's knee having missed what she was aiming for, was a fact of great disappointment to the girl.

"This place, this 'pale tower' was built before the time of your Brimir by those kin to my birthplace, before your scattered bastard-mages invaded these lands," Sheffield breathed, her voice a rasp. "It stood before your Brimir tore this island from the land and cast it into the sky, though this city was not Londinium then. It is rich with secrets and hidden magics, and I have found so many of them. This tower beats to my command; the ancient magics and the later ones alike. Do not think to escape. You will fail," she said, to the crystalline noise of truth. "You will stay here until you cooperate. There is no other way out, save escorted by me, and," the pistol twitched, "this. Your choice is simple. You attacked me when... when I just came in to talk to you, to ask you questions, you have tried to escape in the night, and... and you will not be permitted to do so. I will send spirits to watch you, to ensure your good behaviour. Try that again, and I will use the defences of this place to kill you."

Louise took a deep breath, letting it out. The pain in her side was hurting worse now, a burning sensation which didn't feel good. Hand over the wound, she clutched it, and felt it close up, though the pain increased as she did it. "You insubordinate _cur_," she hissed in between breaths. "I will _never _do what you want. You've locked me up here, rather than letting me go back to Tristain. You've killed my husband. You're a traitor, and a _freak_. And I will find you and hunt you down and take my husband's sword back from you." She paused, recollections of that face finally filtering through the madness which had veiled her thoughts in New Castle. "And I remember you; you stole my staff-glaive, too. Be afraid," she said, tasting hot metal in her own breath, letting this rage-filled arrogance speak for her. "Have nightmares, Madam Sheffield. And... and enjoy your nightmares. Because they're a reminder that I haven't come for you. Yet. So sleep lightly, Madam Sheffield."

The spasm of fear which flickered across that dead face overwhelming even the pain was worth it, Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière felt. The iron door rattled shut again, and she stared at the sealed portal for long minutes, gasping at the pain.

This was no longer a question of rescuing the princess and escaping. This was personal.

* * *

{0}


	15. 14: Games of Power

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 14: Games of Power**

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was Voidsday, once again. It had been a week since Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière had been tasked with her mission by her old friend. And in this week, Princess Henrietta de Tristain had heard only bad news and no news at all. The morning air smelt of dew and grass as she walked in the palace gardens, Agnès to the left of her, and her river dragon familiar to the right. The carapace of the hound-sized dragonet had been oiled until the matt blackish-blue shone, and it twined around her legs, scuttling, only to periodically sprint off in an almost-feline manner only to return munching on various small animals.

Flicking her hair, Henrietta carefully lowered herself onto a still-damp bench and sat, staring across unseeingly at the budding rosebushes. Before her eyes, the river dragon scuttled on its many legs, chasing down a movement in the undergrowth. It emerged from the bushes with an arrogant strut in its gait, and a bushy tail sticking out of its mouth.

"You're a bad girl, aren't you, Daphne?" the princess told her infant dragon with mock seriousness. "You know I feel guilty when you eat too many squirrels, and the gardeners always look so distressed when you rampage over their arrangements. Or you sharpen your teeth in the rock garden."

The river dragon whuffled, strands of mist escaping from its mouth to coil around its body, and it scuttled over to its mistress, to twine around her warm legs with its cold, clammy carapace. Henrietta tried not to squeal.

"I do say, your highness, that it might be wise to wear hose under your skirt when doing such things with your dragon," Agnès said softly. The scarred woman was dressed in the garb she wore when at court, and her hand was never too far away from the magelock at her hip.

The princess did not respond, her hand going down to stroke the beast's head, until it began to emit a faint hissing noise. "It'd just be too much hassle," she said bluntly. "Cardinal Mazarin wants me to be there for the meeting with the Gallian ambassador later today, and it will be pain enough getting changed then, without…" Henrietta sighed, as the realisation struck her. "Oh, I am a silly girl. I could have done this today, precisely because I'm going to have to get changed completely." She bent down, and picked up her contented familiar, carrying it in both arms. "That's going to be fun," she said, with a sarcastic twist in her voice. "I do wonder what my dear royal cousin in Gallia will have declared this time."

"I couldn't say, your highness," her bodyguard said.

"No, and I will not speculate about what that feeble-minded fool wants," Henrietta muttered rebelliously, bouncing her dragonet up and down. "I need to feed Daphne properly, even if she has been feeding herself on squirrels, so we should make our way over to the Veiled Pavilion." She shivered. "It's still a little chilly, and I'd rather be inside when we do that."

"Right away, your highness," Agnès said, helping the princess rise from her seat. "And your highness, your dress is wet from where you have been sitting."

"Bother my dress," the younger woman said, irritation in her voice, leading her way along the paths of the gardens to the marble-walled pavilion. Eternal smokeless fires burned on its roof, and its dew-slick almost-translucent marble walls had an almost mausoleum-like quality. Henrietta knew for a fact that her great-grandfather had built it for certain purposes which were not meant for public discussion – and which had left there aggravatingly many families with distant kinship to the throne – but thankfully her grandfather had it refitted such that it was a menagerie.

It was a shame it was still so early in the year. In the season of Fire, when evenings were at their longest, this was a very pleasant place to be when the magically-altered walls were lit by the setting sun and the temperature was always kept pleasant. And in the meantime, the other spells which her great-grandfather had built into the very fabric of the building made it a useful place to have private conversations.

"Come on, girl!" Henrietta said cheerfully, putting her river dragon down beside the water feature which had been set aside for her. "Let's see what the servants have put in the little river for you this time!" She squinted down at the fast-flowing stream. "It looks like salmon," she said, pushing the hindquarters of the dragonet gently but firmly. "You like that a lot, don't you?"

Enthusiastically, the familiar dove into the stream, its form already lost among the stones and reeds, and Henrietta leaned back with a sigh. "And now, Agnès," she said, one hand subtly moving to her wand, "how are the latest recruits going?"

The blonde woman pursed her lips, one hand idly going to trace a scar which touched the corner of her mouth at a tangent. "Adequately, your highness," she said, with a sniff. "I could ask for better… sadly, too many young women believe this is more akin to status as one of your ladies in waiting. But…" she sighed, "… we do not need to go over that again."

"I'm not giving up the Inner Circle," Henrietta said mulishly, distracted from what she was doing by the old argument. "I want there to be educated young women who can ride with me, who can shoot or cast, and who can hold a… a Founder-cursed intelligent conversation!"

Agnès' shoulders slumped, as her hope of avoiding confrontation vanished. "Please, your highness," she said. "Please. If you would have a circle of companions, please separate them from the Musketeers."

"I can't," Princess Henrietta said through gritted teeth. "Not until I'm crowned. We will not discuss this until then." She tightened her fingers around her wand, and muttered the incantation which would raise the wards. "You know this," she added, wearily. "But while we are on the topic…"

"Indeed," Agnès said, blinking as she mentally changed gears. "Your highness, I have word that the survivors of whatever happened in La Rochelle will be arriving this evening. I have had them moved slowly, and only under cover of night. Their injuries made it hard to do otherwise, even with the healers. Three squads are currently investigating the events, so…" the scarred woman pursed her lips "… I hope we will have a more complete sequence for whatever happened there." She paused. "Due to the need to keep things quiet, I have not been able to use wind-born messages, so we will have to wait. A coded message, though, states that your friend has not been found among the dead..."

Henrietta sucked in a breath.

"… which, incidentally," Agnès said, continuing on mercilessly, "is confirmed as five of the eleven Griffin Knights on the mission. And that is not counting the losses taken already from the wyrm. And although Viscount Wardes is not among their number, this leaves the Griffin Knights with alarming casualties."

"Yes," Henrietta said sadly, biting her lip. "I know… oh, I've been so stupid. We can ill-afford those losses. They shouldn't have died having to clean up the mess of a silly little girl. And…" her expression darkened, "Germania will respect us less if our mage-knights are not the force they should be. So… Agnès… someone killed _my _men inside _my _country. Inside my own borders. And," she balled up her fists, "may have killed my closest friend. Someone dared to do that. They _dared_."

Out of the running water, her familiar raised its head, the river dragon releasing the thin hissing shriek of its kind. The familiar runes on its flank burned a dull crimson and the water around it boiled in thick white clouds.

Agnès shot a nervous glance at the dragonet, hand going to the pistol at her hip. "Your highness," she whispered. "Calm yourself down."

Henrietta stalked over to her familiar, skirts swishing. Uncaring of the dank cold mist or the wet, she scooped her dragon up in both arms, and hugged it close to her chest. The wet animal soaked her stomacher and her jacket, but she took deep breaths, and the red glow of the familiar runes died. "There there," she muttered softly. "You don't need to be angry just because I am, Daphne." She let out a sigh. "And we will need to find the guilty party before we can extract vengeance." Henrietta sighed again. "And it's still technically my mother's kingdom. At some point I really should let her know what has been happening."

The blonde woman coughed.

"Oh, of course I won't," the princess said, shoulders slumping as she petted her familiar. "I may be a silly girl, but my mother has not done anything since my father died. Her neglect… well, I should thank the Lord every day for Cardinal Mazarin. Agnès, I think I shall start doing that. Certainly, I will thank him in my evening prayers." With her free hand, she tugged on her drenched skirts. "And now I will have to go change fully, for the Gallian ambassador. Madame de Helemore is going to be sharp with me again for making such a mess of myself. I smell of dragon, don't I?"

Agnès' fingers tapped the pistol at her hip. "I couldn't possibly say, your highness," she said.

"So yes, then," Henrietta groaned.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The main feature of the Leonid Chamber was the throne from which the monarch traditionally gave audience to visiting dignitaries. Elaborate and ornate, three gold-and-brass lions with eyes of ruby entwined to make the arms and back of the seat, and gave the room its name. Pale woods and marble made up the rest of the audience room and drew the eye towards the gleaming furniture.

The throne was empty.

Instead, before the raised seat was a low wooden table, with three comfortable and rather more prosaic seats positioned around it. The crimson-robed man who sat on one side looked paper-thin, wispy and aged, but despite his advanced age it was whispered in the streets of Bruxelles that this man, Cardinal Mazarin, was the true power behind the Tristainian throne. That Princess Henrietta sat slightly to the left of him, her seat slightly back from the table, would have only produced more whispers. She was dressed in gold-trimmed maroon which called to mind the formal robes of a queen regnant without quite daring to be garments which were the preserve of her mother. The colours set off her hair nicely, and drew attention to the almost-crown tiara she wore. Her dragonet was sitting on her lap.

And against the bloodied colours on one side of the table, the soft blues and whites of the silks worn by the Gallian ambassador seemed effete and delicate. Henrietta envied him the lighter clothes when she was stuck in this heavy brocade, though she did not so much care for the colours. And he was so very fussy, in the way that only a Gallian nobleman could be; his tightly curled pale blue hair was longer than hers and probably took longer to prepare each morning than her own toilet.

Of course, perhaps he deserved some vanity.

"To our respected royal cousin, Queen Marianne of Tristain, Empress of Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maatren, First Lady of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, we bid you welcome in the name of King Joseph II of Gallia and Iberia, Guardian of the Setting Sun, Lord of the Western Sea, Heir of Saint Oranais," said the man, reading off the scroll on the table before him. "It is with much melancholy, grief and sadness that we must note that our cousin has not acceded to our perfectly reasonable request that the throne of Tristain act with all decent speed to restore the natural order of all things. Long have we desired for the righteousness of past times to be restored, but in a display which has left Gallia reconsidering its relationship with its cousin, Tristain has been most sadly neglectful."

Princess Henrietta was personally of the opinion that the Galian ambassador was a decent sort by the standards of the diplomats she had to meet, and that he really did not deserve some of the instructions that came through from Versailles.

"To this end, therefore, to prevent the sin and vice which flocks through the borders of this innocent land from foul places within Tristain, the throne of Gallia finds it necessary to increase the tariff on all fresh fruits which pass the border between our two nations by an amount no less than three times the current tariff."

There was madness in the Gallian royal family, and it was an all-but-open secret that King Joseph was feeble-minded, a royal prisoner within an ornate palace kept there by powerful nobles. The man used what little authority his alleged subjects permitted him in pathetic, wasteful ways, but in truth it was the very pettiness of such dictates which meant he was still permitted to do such things.

"However in joyousness we must thank you, cousin, for your kind and fair gift of two exquisite manikins," the ambassador continued, a slight twitch in his eyebrow the only sign of the mental stress that he was suffering from this. "In acceptance of that fair deed, we do hereby and immediately lift the ban on timber from the western forests of our domain being exported to Tristain."

It was a sign of how bound the king of Gallia was that he could not even ban his eastern nobles – the ones who actually sold lumber to Tristain – from selling to the smaller nation, and so he had been forced to only forbid those who did not actually engage in the trade. Henrietta had felt shocked by such a sign of noble abuse of their liege when she had this situation explained to her by Cardinal Mazarin, years ago.

She had then had those illusions stripped from her, by the cardinal's explanation that such a weak monarch was very good for Tristain. The thirteen-year old had suffered ill sleep for days after her mentor had explained that the recent death of the Duc d'Orleans – brother of King Joseph, who had been expected by most to be the next king – was the best thing they could have hoped for. A weak-minded Gallian king would not turn forces hardened from the conquest of Iberia against its lesser sister-nation. With the death of the general-prince who had led the shockingly rapid invasion, the armies which could retake a country larger than Tristain in fewer than two years were no longer a loaded musket in dangerous hands.

Princess Henrietta missed those early days of childhood innocence, before her father had died and her mother had retreated into mourning and all but left governance in the hands of others. Sometimes she wondered if the Emperor of Germania had councillors whispering similar things. That Tristain was crippled by a queen who did not rule and who had dropped all her duties of governance to focus on self-pity, and that a marriage to the daughter would conquer the nation for him without a fight. She was almost certain that such suggestions were behind the loveless marriage which waited for her at the end of summer.

Refocusing on the scene before her, she caught the end of Cardinal Mazarin's formulaic response, and listened silently as the two men mentally changed gear, moving to matters which actually… well, mattered.

"… and… mmm… do convey the good wishes of the Tristainian throne to the Duchess d'Aquitaine and her new son," the wispy old man said. "Has she decided on a name yet, Antoine?"

"Oh, probably, probably," the Gallian ambassador said. "But I do not know it, so…" he gave a slight shrug, "I am not to be of much use there, eh?"

"That is a shame," Henrietta said. "Please convey my personal best wishes as well as the wishes of the throne."

"I will be able to do that, your highness," the blue-haired man said with a slight nod. "I am sure my cousin will ask to be remembered to you."

The princess flapped a hand at him. "Well, when she feels fit to inform us of the name," she said, arching her eyebrows at him, "then I will be sure to obtain a fitting gift for such a child."

The ambassador leant in conspiratorially. "I did hear mention – somewhere – that she might like the name 'Giles'," he said in a stage whisper. "Purely as rumour, of course."

"Well, it is just rumour," Henrietta said casually. "It is possible – I have heard somewhere – that Giles is a good, bookish scholarly name. Founder knows that Eloise deserves a child who will not be as rash as his father."

"I could of course not comment upon such rumour," the man said, "but I do know the poor sweet girl misses him dearly." He shook his head. "Ah, but to move off such depressing matters. Naturally, you and whatever guests you feel would brighten the day are invited to a charming little garden party I plan to hold in the embassy in the last week of Falling Water. I intend to see spring out with good cheer."

"Mmm, I will be sure to inform the Queen of it," Cardinal Mazarin said. "Even if she cannot make it due to previous arrangements," – which was merely the diplomatic courtesy, for the Queen seldom left the palace nowadays – "I am sure that the flower of Tristainian high society will attend."

"Even its most lovely blossom?" the ambassador asked, flicking his long eyelashes at the princess.

"As I recall, your Falling Water party last year was rather enjoyable," Henrietta said in a non-answer nevertheless posed with a certain coquettish edge. "I have certainly heard that it was rather better than any of the ones given by…"

Whatever she had been about to say was interrupted by the commotion outside the door and raised voices. "Oh my," Cardinal Mazarin said, calmly. Slowly, he rose to his feet. "I will just go and see what the commotion is."

But before he could make his way over to the main door, a woman in the uniform of the royal messengers entered, slate in hand. "Cardinal Mazarin!" she called out. "And your highness," she added, looking around. "A message on the winds from Albion!"

Henrietta paled. A message… from Albion. That was unlikely to be good news, especially since it was being reported to Cardinal Mazarin first and… she locked her hands in her lap and tried not to show any concern or worry.

"Messenger," the elderly cardinal said, a hint of steel in his voice. "Consider your words. If you would speak, then…"

"Albion has fallen! The message… it's from the rebels, but it's using royal codes. It… it says that on Firesday, the 4th of Ruling Water, New Castle was claimed, and now the last traces of resistance in that place has been eliminated!"

There was silence in the hall. Princess Henrietta clenched her hands into fists under the table. So… so Albion had… could have fallen yesterday, and she had not even noticed. There had been no crack of thunder as one of the Brimiric lines fell, and there had been no… the heavens had not wept for the Prince Wales. Poor Cearl. Poor, poor, beloved Cearl. And if Louise Françoise had the misfortune to have had the fortune to even make her way to Albion and had been there when it fell…

… well, she had to trust that her friend had been able to say that she was Tristainian and so been taken prisoner. And destroyed the papers, though she felt just _terrible_for thinking that. That way… well, they would be able to ransom her back.

The silence was broken by the scraping of the Gallian ambassador's chair. "I am sorry to be having to go," he said, hastily, "but I think it is time that I am to return to my embassy and wait for instructions for my government. This is to be a matter of most seriousness, and I do not want to be saying things without orders.

"Mmm, yes," Cardinal Mazarin said with a sigh. "No doubt there will be many hurried conferences between us in a few days."

"No doubt," the ambassador said, with a bow.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The princess was not entirely sure how she made her way through the rest of the day. Her fear for the Prince Wales consumed what little attention she would have been able to spare. She knew that Cardinal Mazarin had scolded her for her inattention, but she could not described what he had said to her if the Founder himself had asked it of her.

It had probably been something about the selfishness of personal desire and how as a royal, a descendant of the Founder, she should sublimate her will to serving the state which she would come to embody. It was usually that sort of thing.

And it wasn't as if he wasn't right. She'd seen all too well what her mother's selfishness had cost the country. Had cost her personally, as the daughter of someone who had apparently loved her husband more than she loved her daughter. But… Founder's Void, there had to be something less extreme than what the old clergyman would want her to be like.

But one way or another, she'd made her way through the day. And as Agnès led her through the corridors of the palace, the princess tried to suppress her nerves. She could feel the butterflies in her stomach, churning and boiling and roiling.

This was an older and less maintained area of the palace, a wing which she had set aside for the Royal Musketeers and which had, in past years, been the training grounds for a former first minster's private army. She had felt it fitting – and more importantly cheaper – to requisition this place to be the centre of operations for her own forces. Which were technically a private army, at least until her mother formally abdicated in her favour. Fortunately, for some reason the Crown had shown no signs of objecting to the Royal Musketeers, and the high and middle nobility had so far shrugged off the fact that the crown princess might have a personal force of commoner and inexprimé women trained in blackpowder weapons and riding. Jolly useful to go do minor bandit-chasing work and a few squads of them could go pounding through the woods and find an orcish hide-out for the proper fighters to exterminate. And one could even send your inexprime daughters to them if one could not arrange a marriage for them and tell the neighbours that they were in the service of the Crown.

That they thought that was all the Royal Musketeers were was a blessing.

Walking around the edge of the training courts, the two of them made their way to the squat, heavy stone building that had once been the jails, but which now served as the headquarters. Agnès had chosen that over some of the rather lighter and airier structures, and Henrietta had acceded to the request… no, that demand. The cracks of musketry sounded from the firing ranges and shouting drill instructors took younger girls through first practice with the short spears used to train with the bayonet.

"Your highness!"

The princess waved the saluting women back to their practice, and continued onwards. "How are this batch?" she asked Agnès, hands clasped behind her back.

The scarred woman paused on her stroll, clicking her tongue. "Well enough," she said, after a moment's thought.

Henrietta's eyes flicked over the suddenly beaming expressions of the women… no, the girls who had clearly been eavesdropping. "My, such praise," she said softly, barely moving her lips.

The older woman's face did not move at all at the whispered comment. "Your highness, come on," she said. "Leave the trainees to their practice."

There was a flurry of motion as the subtle chiding hit home, and the two observers made their way to the headquarters, Agnès guiding her liege through the door and carefully closing it behind her. Then it was down into the former cells deep below the earth, down into the padded places layered with wards to prevent eavesdropping, which dated back to time when this place had been built. Henrietta prayed – though perhaps that was not the right thing to do, considering what she was involved in – that further questions had not been raised by those wards. After all, evidence of concealment was as suspicious as conspiracy itself, in certain eyes.

Another door was opened, and the cold air and the scent of mildew and rot hit her like a hammer. Henrietta gagged, and stepped back, fanning herself.

"Commander!" came an oddly mellifluous voice from within. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't… um. Oh. Your highness!"

Henrietta poked her head around the door, into the underground training court. Once it had held dozens of iron cages for 'enemies of the state', but the rusted chains hanging from the vaulted ceiling were the only sign of that now. The trainees down here were Agnès' special group, a few rare gems plucked from various places around the realm. They were dressed in undyed flax, and each held a training spear in hand. And one of them – the blushing thirteen-year old with coal-black hair and a slightly-sickly greyish hint to her skin – was looking rather sheepish.

"I'm merely passing through," the princess said mildly, still feeling slightly faint. "I don't intend to interrogate you."

"… and I just want to say how sorry I am and how I didn't mean to miss like that and even if I wasn't meant to be mixing that up with spear training I thought it might be a way to…" the girl shut up, when an older girl with the same strange sea-green eyes as Agnès elbowed her in the ribs, "… ow."

A woman with blind milk-white eyes, wearing the emblem of a sergeant glared at the young girl, and saluted Henrietta. "Your highness." Turning to face Agnès, she added, "And I will be talking to Mademoiselle du Bosque about that. And," she added, in a clipped and very precise High Tristainian accent, "several other things."

"Very good," the chevalier said, her face showing no emotion. "Montálise, have you done as I asked?"

The seemingly-blind woman nodded. "Yes, ma'am," she said. "I will have the report written up by tomorrow, but I can give it in person if you wish."

The unfortunate Mademoiselle du Bosque perked up, at the prospect of punishment delayed, but slumped again when Agnès said, "No, keep training them. I am taking the princess to her right now. Keep up the practice." She shot a glance at the black-haired musketeer trainee. "I will be back later today," she said, producing a squeak. "Princess Henrietta?"

"Lead on," the girl said graciously, hitching up her long skirts slightly and looking at the easy garb of the trainees with a small degree of enviousness.

It was not far to the treatment rooms hidden down here, for training injuries that it would best to not come to the eyes of the healers who saw to most of the commonplace injuries of the Musketeers. Now they saw other use, though, for the one survivor of the four musketeers which had been sent with Louise de la Vallière.

Princess Henrietta gasped, covering her mouth with her handkerchief at the sight of Anne-Sophie. Swaddled in bandages, pus seeping out from yellow-stained linen, the pink-blonde girl was barely recognisable. She had been once chosen to grace the princess' side as an intelligent young woman capable of both looking pretty, fighting to protect her liege and carrying out an intelligent conversation. Princess Henrietta did not specialise in healing magics, but as a triangle-class water mage she knew enough to say that the former two were going to be forever beyond the Musketeer.

"Your highness," the musketeer rasped, voice prematurely harshened by smoke. "Sorry for… for… I couldn't carry out your orders fully. I failed you."

"You didn't!" Henrietta cried out, eyes already brimming as she rushed to the side of the young woman who had been one of the closest things to a friend that the crown princess had been permitted to have from day to day. "Anne-Sophie, I'm so sorry! If I'd had known… I expected there to be risk, but in Albion! Not before you had even departed our shores!" Drawing her wand, she whispered a basic healing spell, to cleanse infections and give the wounded woman more strength. "What happened?"

Hesitantly and accompanied by much coughing, the musketeer began to explain. Aided by Agnès who summarised what they already knew and several spells from Henrietta, Anne-Sophie laboriously explained her tale.

"Golem-men?" Henrietta exclaimed at the end of the explanation of what had happened in the bedroom of the hotel. She had been holding in that exclamation for a while. "As in, golems in the shape of men?"

"No. No. It… it was like a man wearing armour. I… I found that out when Lady de la Vallière killed one. My… my pistol shot just flattened itself into it. Like… like if I'd fired it into an anvil." She paused, hacking up soot and blood and Henrietta hurried in with another spell. "She… that polearm of hers carved it up like it was a joint. Not really… really a surprise. It could just cut through stone like that. But… but yes. To a man they chased after her, and I managed to kill the one who was left, which... a pistol shot to the head was what it took, held against the temple. It... it didn't pierce the armour, but he stopped moving. And in the one that the lady opened up..." she choked, and Agnès had to give her water, before she could continue. "There was a man inside, even though it looked like a really fancy golem from the outside. Like one of the special ones in the thr-throne room.

"And… too," Anne-Sophie coughed, hacking deeply, "your highness, commander. I… I did not tell others of… of this, but from the corpse of one of the attackers, I recovered a trinket. It… it came from one of the ones that Lady de la Vallière killed with…" she shuddered, "… with that horrifying weapon she had." She paused, looking down at her bandaged hands. "I… I tried to get more, but I couldn't… m-move the corpse, so I slipped it into one of my powder-pots."

Clumsily, she gestured from her bed towards where her equipment had been dumped, directing Agnès to the small clay-fired pots which the musketeers kept power refills in. The scarred woman pressed the ring on her left hand to the pot, and twitched when the band began to glow a dull red.

"Magic?" Princess Henrietta asked, tilting her head.

"Aye, my princess," the blonde woman said, pursing her lips. She raised eyebrows in questioning. "What is this?" she asked, bluntly.

Anne-Sophie swallowed. "On the body, under the armour, from where Lady de la Vallière opened it up, there was something which… well, I thought it was jewellery. So I went to take it, so we might have something to identify them. But it was under the skin, and…" she coughed, "well, I pried it out. That… that was just before the fire from the burning one started spreading and I… I h-had to get out. I would have had more time, but the smoke was choking, and... and in the end, I had to break the window and get out that way."

The commander of the Royal Musketeers unstoppered the pot at that, horrified curiosity in her odd sea-green eyes, and shook out the contents. In some ways it resembled an amulet, albeit one which was rather bulky and covered in dried gore, but where there would have been the chain, instead there was a radiating, branched network of thin wires. Even under the dried blood, they gleamed oddly in the light, like…

"… the Staff of Destruction," Henrietta breathed. "It reflected light in the same way." She tapped it with her wand, muttering a cantrip, and an odd rainbow like wash of light played against it. "Yes, it is magical, and strongly so," the princess said, leaning in closer with her eyes alight. "And you said this… this was in someone's _body?_"

The injured musketeer nodded. "Yes, your highness."

"Whatever could it be?" the teenage girl asked herself, rhetorically. "Some kind of replacement… replacement heart or something, which allows a man to fight past natural death, like in the tales of the Golem-Man of Tolou where a man replaced his heart with an earthstone?" She began to bite her nails, as she pondered over the puzzle. "But, no… no, there are no earthstones in this… or windstones or firestones or waterstones, either. They'd have made a different reaction to the spell. Or… or maybe it's some kind of magical device which lets non-mages use a single spell! Oh, imagine what you could do with that, Agnès! Or…"

The woman with the cross-hatched scars on her face coughed politely. "Your highness," she said. "Perhaps you should think about the more pressing problem."

Henrietta blinked. "Yes, yes," she said, slowly. "But remind me; once this is all over, Agnès… we need to have a proper catalogue of all of the Crown's treasures. The Staff of Destruction was sitting in the dark for Founder knows how long; we need to look for such things if… oh." She bit her lip. "I wonder if these strange people are who Foquet works for? Is it really a coincidence that such things crop up right after that wretched thief gets away with so many things? But… yes, yes, sorry." She shook her head.

"This is a bad habit of yours, your highness," Agnès said softly, a slightly chiding note in her voice. "Has not the cardinal reminded you time and time again that you tend to value your own satiated curiosity more than you do affairs of state?"

"In exactly those words," the younger woman said, a tart note in her voice, "so please don't quote him at me, Agnès. We just can't talk about… the thing… in front of…" she jerked her head towards Anne-Sophie. "But if you please, Agnès, have the Duchess de la Vallière summoned to court. No," Henrietta corrected herself, "have her presence politely requested."

"Do you wish to mention your friend to her mother?" the scarred woman said bluntly.

Henrietta paused for a moment. "Yes," she said, after a moment's thought. "In fact… belay that order. I will go and write the letter personally this evening." She flapped a hand at the head of the Royal Musketeers. "See to the matter here, and see what you can discover from the Griffin Knights, too. I am," she sighed melodramatically, pausing at the door, "a delicate lady and I rather think they will be more blunt with you, rather than apologising for failing me. I am headed immediately to the royal archives, to go and ask ingénue and girlish questions of the men there. I have just read an interesting book, you see, and I wish to find out things about rare kinds of golem." She paused, the strangely gleaming device in her hand. "Someone is behind this," she said, in a voice laced with steel. "I don't care if it's those clever artificers of Gallia, a Albionese Republican plot, or whatever. Someone is going to pay."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The days crept by for the princess. Her attempts at subtle research in the royal archives came to nothing concrete, and her inspections of the royal treasury found no more of that strange shiny metal. And in the meantime, oh! There were meetings. There were plenty of meetings. There were meetings and conferences and audiences and representations and quiet words in the garden and carefully worded policy statements to be sent to ambassadors. There were serious men and serious women having serious conversations about the serious ramifications of the events. Even her mother roused herself from her mourning chambers to pay attention to affairs of state.

Further messages from Albion merely agitated the beehive of formal society more. King Jacomus was claimed as dead, though even the rebels said they did not have his corpse. The Prince Wales and the Princess Hibernia had been captured. Then it was announced that they had been captured, and would be tried. Then the announcement further developed into the perplexing statement that they would be tried under Royal law for crimes against the Crown.

"You can't try the crown prince… no, the King for crimes against the Crown of Albion!" Henrietta exploded at the meeting with Cardinal Mazarin where that had been announced. "That just doesn't make sense!"

"Mmm. I am afraid it does, your highness," the elderly man said, quill scratching away at the paper stacks he had in front of him. "Where was… mmm, yes… there it was. Yes, it is clear under Church law that the Crown and the one who wears it cannot be the same person, because the sacred heirs of Brimir are righteous and correct in all manners, and it is clear that fallible men cannot achieve perfection, hence a king regnant… or a queen regnant… merely is a… mmm… a subset of the greater entity that is the Crown. Of course that must be so, mmm. Else, inheritance would not work. The Crown would die with the crowned, and that should not be."

"They'll stack the court against him!" the princess snapped, squaring her jaw. "He can't have done anything wrong even by that stupid legal set-up by protecting it against people who want to get rid of the monarchy! That's just…" she thumped the table, panting, glaring at Cardinal Mazarin as if he as nearest representative of the Church was responsible.

The old man sighed. "Oh, of course," he said, staring mournfully at the inkwell that Henrietta had knocked over. "What they are doing is an exercise in pedantry, and… your highness, they cannot legally execute him. That won't stop them, but as the monarch – albeit uncrowned – he may pardon himself at will. It is a legal fiction they are acting out to excuse their regicide."

"Well, I'm sure that will make poor, poor Cearl feel so much better when they kill him," the auburn-haired girl said, slumping back down, her fury spent. She preferred the anger. It was much more useful than feeling upset.

The cardinal peered at her over the papers. "No, there is no plausible way to rescue him," he said, softly.

Henrietta blinked. "What?"

"Pardon, your highness, not 'what'. And I can see you trying to work out a way to save him. Your highness, they will have him in the Tower of Londinium. I would not bet the sum forces of the Griffin, Manticore and Dragon knights against that place. There are things in that place that should never see the light of day, and any attack on it… your highness, it is known that the Republicans have at least two square-class mages with them." The old man shuffled his papers. "That is why your summons to the Duchess de la Vallière were ill-advised. I did not wish to say anything, but you persist in this…"

Henrietta blushed bright red at those words, matching the cardinal's crimson robes. "Please, no. Th-this… this is something else. It is to do with L… her daughter."

Snowy white eyebrows rose. "Oh, my apologies, your highness. I had thought it was to do with whatever you had been doing with Viscount Wardes and… you have not received news of his death? Your highness, it would be most dire news for our country and you should not be informing the mother of his fiancé first." The cardinal paused. "Even if she is the Duchess Karina. Which… mmm… would make it a reasonable, albeit…"

"No, no, no!" The princess was now feeling like a naughty little girl caught doing something improper. That is to say, she once again felt like a small girl caught running around with a sword she got down off the wall, rather than a young woman whose foolishness was putting her country in a rather problematic position. "Cardinal, please, accept my word that I have absolutely no intent whatsoever of trying to persuade the duchess of trying to come out of retirement or to go Albion to rescue the Prince Wales."

"Ah." Cardinal Mazarin carefully pulled himself to his feet, and shuffled over to the window. "That is at least some reassurance, but… your highness, who would you be intending for her to go to Albion to rescue?"

Drat. She had hoped that he might not have noticed that little phrasing.

"It would be best if you think quickly, your highness," the man continued gently, "because if my aging eyes do not deceive me, I do believe that is a manticore coming in from the east. I… mmm… do believe it has been a week since you invited her to the palace, so at least you were not too demanding in your invitation."

It had been a week, and inspection with a spyglass did reveal the identity of the rider. And Henrietta barely had enough time to have her petticoats rearranged and smartened before she was having to hurry to receive the slightly limping figure in travelling skirts who stalked her way towards the palace. Sitting in the Matthiasian room, she took a deep breath, and prepared for the difficult conversation which she knew awaited her.

If there was one thing Henrietta could say immediately, it was that Karina de la Vallière, Duchess de la Vallière, Karin of the Heavy Wind knew how to make an entrance. Striding in through the doors, her dust-caked riding skirts flowing around her, the woman's spurs and metal-heeled boots clicked against the granite. The princess amused herself with idle speculation if the wind blowing around her was just the result of opening the door, a spell for such a purpose, or just the random fluctuations of magic which tended to occur around powerful mages. Certainly, if it was the latter, wind mages certainly got the best deal out of it. Damp clinging chills were _so _much less convenient.

"Your highness," Karin said, bowing – not curtseying despite her skirt – five paces before the royal heir. "You summoned me."

Henrietta put on a winsome smile, and immediately mentally winced because it was the wrong line of approach to take. "I requested your presence, your grace," she replied. "'Summoned' is such a harsh word. Please, come with me to the Alabaster Room; you must be fatigued after your trip."

The pink-haired woman's eyes were flinty. "It is nothing, your highness," she said, even as she complied. "I would rather deal with this matter quickly so I can return to my husband and my daughter."

Settling down, Henrietta shooed out the guards and courtiers, and settled herself down. Daphne, her dragonet, twined around her legs. She had tried to go near the Duchess Karina, and the glare from the older woman had been quite enough to prompt her to stay close to her mistress.

There was silence in the room, save for the slight noise of the two women as they shifted in their seats. The duchess sat bolt upright, if anything leaning slightly forwards. She did not touch the refreshments which had been left for them. There was something about her of the coiled spring, even more so that the two of them were alone.

"Your highness," the pink-haired woman began again, "you summoned me under the guise of talking about my daughter. I would like an explanation."

"Ah, yes," Henrietta said, resting her elbows on the arms of the chair and propping her chin up on her hands. "In this, we have two things to cover." She paused, for a moment, keeping her eyes on the older woman's face. "You are aware that she did not summon anything in the Springtime Summoning Ritual, yes?"

"I am." The words were chilly, precise, and as metaphorically cold and proud as the blue moon Dorika. "That is the concern of the school, and in a letter from her she informed me that no action was being taken and she was being permitted to attempt again next year."

The princess tilted her head slightly. The duchess might be good at not showing expressions, but she had all but shouted her feelings from the rooftops by her lack of emotions. That very rigidity, that lack of response told her precisely that this was a proud woman who hated that topic being raised. "I would have spoken in her favour," she said, picking her words carefully. "I know some would throw around the slander of 'inexprimé' about her, but that simply shows they are ignorant. An inexprimé girl would not have been able to cause those explosive mishaps that she proved so… skilled at.

Chin still propped on her hands, Henrietta paused for a moment.

"But that did not prove necessary. She earned her own presence at the Academy in the eyes of the headmaster, and having found out what occurred I agree fully with his choice. We will cover that later, but it is because of those events that I must admit to you that I chose to send her to Albion in the company of Viscount Wardes to conduct vital business for our nation. And I must further admit to you that you would not be being told of this, save that there was an ambush at La Rochelle and she and the Viscount are missing, believed to be on a vessel to Albion. Though they should have been in contact by now. I have asked the court astrologers to try to discern information about them, but at the moment, the stars are unclear."

Another silence, far more prolonged and dead than the previous one.

"Why, pray, precisely was my youngest daughter involved in such things?" the duchess asked, in a chillingly polite tone of voice. "My youngest daughter who is known to have problems with controlling her magic and who has not shown herself to possess any remarkable skills."

Henrietta folded her hands on her lap. "I am afraid that I must disagree," she said, inclining her head slightly. "And this is one of the things we must discuss."

Karin's eyes flickered to the right, to the left, and then settled on Agnès and on her strange eyes. "I _see_," she said, in a voice which was even colder. "Yes, your highness."

"Certain students of the Academy of Magic can extend more light – if you will – upon this problem," the princess said. "I will invite them to the palace to explain, because I feel that you will take it best from their lips and I do not wish to prejudge your thoughts. Not least because it is," and there Henrietta rolled her eyes, "rather unbelievable. In the meantime, your grace, I extend the hospitality of the palace to you."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Montmorency de la Montmorency felt the eyes of the crown princess and the Duchess de la Vallière on her, and tried her very best not to faint. She was merely thankful that she had emptied her bladder before they had been called in to report, because that was something she did not need to worry about. Even Kirche looked slightly intimidated by the woman who looked like a harder-faced version of Louise, although the Germanian had been… well, shamelessly gregarious with the princess before the duchess had entered.

The worst bit had been that the princess had been quite sociable with that terribly improper behaviour. One simply wasn't meant to act like that with royalty. The redhead was… was clearly taking advantage of the fact that as a foreigner – and worse, a Germanian – she wasn't supposed to know better.

And Tabitha was being as impassive and monosyllabic as usual, answering in a quiet Gallian-accented voice. Monmon had half-thought that the way the blue-haired girl had vanished on the same day as Louise meant the thing was related, but she had returned last Dorikasday from her visit to her sick mother. There was still no sign of Louise, despite the fact it was now Taksonisday, and the fact that they had to now explain the events of that fateful day when Fouquet had attacked to the Duchess de la Vallière was not a good sign. Not good for her, because it meant she had to talk in person with that fearsome individual, and certainly not good for Louise.

And that was… yes, that was a bad thing. Yes, Louise was an arrogant, spiteful, stubborn, argumentative example of high nobility breeding. But then again, at least in the opinion of Montmorency, all of those things had their place, in moderation. And there were much worse people to be around at school. At least Louise wasn't quite as skin-itchingly annoying as… oh, Marie de Bruxelles, to name but one – chubby and self-righteous – example.

She really hoped the other girl was all right.

The Duchess Karina clicked her tongue, and leaned forwards again. "So," she said, each word rammed into place like a musketball. "My daughter picked you up, and carried you up to the roof after a golem walked through the building. Whereupon she punched her way through the roof to avoid the backlash from the defence system. It was at this point you notice that her forehead was glowing with a brand which resembled an x-shaped cross and that she was on 'green flecked with yellow-brown' fire. Which was not burning things, unlike normal fire."

The pink-haired woman's lips were pursed. "Yes," Montmorency managed. "Um... she did slightly fr-fracture her hand breaking through the roof, though. If that counts."

The gaze the duchess shot her was not angry; it was in equal parts cold and analytical. It also distinctly felt like she doubted the girl's sanity. "She then mentioned something about an affinity for 'acid' as her element. And went out to fight the golem armed with a curtain pole."

Montmorency took a deep breath, and folded her hands before her. "Your highness," she said, trying to avoid her voice shaking. Mentally, she cursed, as her mind emptied on how she was meant to address a duchess. "Your grace," she eventually recalled. "I… I can only say what… what happened."

"She's telling the truth," Kirche added. "Well, at least, it all makes sense for what probably happened up to the point where I got there."

"Sense." That one word was the clanging of a prison door. The Duchess Karina stared down the bridge of her nose at the three girls, focussing most on the notably-scared Montmonrency. "It makes sense that my youngest daughter threw a curtain hook at the thief and managed to knock her down from a distance of a good thirty metres? It makes sense that she – completely untrained in the martial arts – started destroying golems with a treasure? And it makes sense that a colossal golem flattened her, and she… she reformed in its hand, only to destroy it in some kind of explosion of green and brass-coloured flames? And then she destroyed the other arm?"

The pink haired woman clicked her tongue, glaring at the girls.

"No. I refuse to believe it. It is nonsense."

All that Monmon could think of at that point was that… Founder, Louise looked like her mother. Oh, certainly, her sort-of-friend was younger, smaller, rounder-faced – and notably lacking in the bosom region. But they had the same tiny nose, the same rather angular cheekbones, the same pink hair; a clear sign of a strong noble lineage.

And there was something in the eyes. Something in the eyes looked like Louise had started to look recently, since… well, since the strangeness of the fight and the incident with the golem. Something which suggested that those moments when the daughter went certain and arrogant may have been a deliberate attempt to emulate her mother.

Montmorency privately made a mental note to not annoy this woman in any way. Not that she would be as foolish as to annoy the Duchess de la Vallière anyway, as one did not go around antagonising the high nobility, especially when one was a member of a noble family declined from its once-glory. One did also not annoy Karin of the Heavy Wind. But Founder's Void, it was one thing to hear the stories and another thing to deal with her in person.

"That was what I had to tell you, from the actual sources," Princess Henrietta mercifully interrupted, causing the duchess to turn her terrifying attention away from the blonde girl. "Because, quite honestly, I would not expect you to believe it from my lips." The princess considered the three of them. "If you do not mind, I would like the three of you to stay a little longer," she said. "At the very least, I would like you to dine with me this evening; it is the very least I can do, for dragging you away from the Academy like this." Her eyes lingered over Tabitha. "Yes, please, accept my offer," she said.

The blonde girl had to resist the urge to curl her finger in her ringlets. "I would be honoured, your highness," she said, immediately going to curtsey. Invited to dinner by the crown princess? She would certainly be able to tell that to her parents, even if she could not say exactly what the context had been. Kirche was quick behind her, and Tabitha nodded once.

"Good, good," Princess Henrietta said sunnily. "I will leave you in the capable hands of Madame de Helemore. She is the Master of the Royal Wardrobe…"

"Not the mistress?" Kirche interjected. Montmorency strongly suspected that the red-haired Germanian would not have been able to stop herself for considerable sums of money, for all that the Duchess Karina was not glaring at her.

Annoyingly, Princess Henrietta giggled. "I have tried to get her to change the name," she admitted, "but it is tradition, and she refuses. But yes, for all that, she will help you select some garments more…" she raised an eyebrow, "… appropriate than those school uniforms for a formal dinner."

It was a dismissal, and Monmon clearly recognised it for it was. Curtseying and taking her leave – oh! Getting to wear proper skirts again, rather than the disgracefully short ones which were part of the uniform, was wonderful – she heard behind her, "So, your grace, we must talk in private further, I think," from the princess.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The door closed behind them with a click, and the mute stillness surrounded the two women.

"So." The duchess settled herself down in the new confines. Despite the apparent peacefulness of that gesture, there was still something on edge about her, akin to one of the great cats of the south or perhaps the very manticores she had once commanded. "Your highness, let us assume for a moment that I accept the ridiculousness of those tales about my daughter. I still do not see why you would choose her for such a thing."

Henrietta took a deep breath. "Please, accept that I needed someone that I trusted completely and intimately," she said. "I hardly sent her unprotected; she was merely my representative among a column of ten of the Griffin Knights and Viscount Wardes himself."

The duchess cocked her head. "Well." Her tone was clipped. "I cannot fault you on that precaution in a technical sense, but I can, once again, raise questions as to why my daughter in particular was chosen for such a thing. Even if… and I strongly doubt it… she has some unique power or even – if I were to credit such a thing – she is a mage of some unheard of element, she is _sixteen_."

"Was that not much the age when you joined the Manticore Knights?" Henrietta interjected, a barb she had prepared in advance suspecting that such an objection would be raised. "And at which you thwarted a conspiracy against my grandfather?"

The older woman glowered. It seemed that was an unwelcome comment. "I was also a prodigy, your highness, and did it entirely at my own choosing," she said to the crown princess. "With the utmost respect, the two situations are not the same."

"And I needed someone I could trust," Henrietta said, resuming the offensive. "I would have asked this of her – and yes, I asked her as one friend asking another, not as my subject – had she not been involved in the unpleasantness at the Academy." She raised her eyebrows. "She was my main playmate in childhood, after all; would you rather I put my trust in one of the pretty butterflies at court?"

"Why did you not trust the Viscount de Vajours?" Karin said, ignoring the rhetorical question. "Why do you not trust him?"

Ah. And that was it. That was the difficult question. Why had she not trusted Viscount Wardes? Well, it was quite simple. To tell a man like him and of his age, loyal to the crown rather than herself, that she had been involved with the Prince Wales of Albion in that manner? Unthinkable. Louise Françoise trusted her, was loyal to her, was her _friend_.

Fundamentally, she had needed a friend for it, not a subject. "I trusted her in it, and it was sensitive," Henrietta said, slowly.

"If it is sensitive, then no matter what happens, my daughter will not betray her country," the pink-haired woman said, hard-eyed. There was utter certainty in her voice.

"I trust her, yes," Henrietta said, relaxing slightly.

"Oh no," Karin said, knuckles tight on the table in front of her. "We should still plan for that contingency. It is a mere passing family concern; a chit of a girl who talked would not be my daughter. Now, what is the matter that would have her bought into such things?"

The princess realised too late that she was blushing and she had taken too long to answer. "Your highness?" the Duchess Karina asked, her tone flat. "Have you acted in a way unbefitting of your position and all those who entrust their loyalty in you? Because if you have, may the Founder protect you if my daughter suffers needlessly because of your actions."

* * *

{0}

* * *

She had to get out. That much, Princess Henrietta knew. She had managed to end the conversation with Karin of the Heavy Wind without admitting to anything, but the older woman _knew_, surely she knew! Founder damn it all, of course a mother like her would be able to read such things off a young girl's face! She had been week and foolish and now one of the higher aristocracy knew of her foolish weakness, because she had miscalculated and invited her in!

So she had to get out. It was like running away, only not. The royal palace might have been the size of a small town, built in the central isle of Bruxelles, but one tired of manicured gardens and carefully arranged rocks and constant perfection. She sometimes just had to see her capital, and it did the commoner masses good to see that the royalty actually paid attention to their lives.

Not that she went into the very poorest regions of Bruxelles and the townships and village-slums that sprawled out beyond its walls, of course. That wasn't at all safe, and those places were disgusting. She had plans for them, oh yes, but until she could make them a place she would at least stable her horses she wasn't about to visit them.

So instead her coach, escorted by musketeers on horseback, made its way through the isle and across the arched bridges into the main parts of the capital. She could feel the wealth of a neighbourhood by the motion of the vehicle under her; cobbles indicated that the place had never been wealthy, smoothed stone was a sign that they could afford earth-mage construction and maintenance, and if the smoothed stone was wearing and developing potholes it was a clear sign that the inhabitants of the place were no longer as wealthy as they had been. And when she waved out of the window at the inhabitants of the kingdom that would be hers, she made sure to note other details and the general response she produced.

Her reasons for these trips out were not entirely pure, though. It was an act of independence and selfdom to be able to go out like this; it was something she chose to do. She asserted what freedoms she had by doing this. And with the windows of the coach drawn up and the curtains pulled, it was an excellent place to discuss things. Or, as the case was right now, be reassured by Agnès who sat next to her while Daphne coiled around her legs.

"I should not have invited her to the palace," the princess said yet again. "She's going to find things out that she shouldn't. Even more. If she pushes any further on the matter of the Prince Wales… oh, I won't be able to stop myself blushing like I did already, and she'll be able to work things out completely. Rather than just knowing that something is wrong. I mean, Louise managed to work it out. Of course her mother will." She wrung her hands together. "This is a mistake and things are going to go wrong."

The blonde scarred woman had one hand on her pistol as usual, eyes often flicking away from her liege's face to either window. "You sent the message on the same day that you yourself received the full information that something had happened," she said. "It cannot be changed now, so accept that you did it for reasons that you can justify it to her, and then move on."

"It's not that easy!" Henrietta protested, the sudden outburst dying away into a sigh. "I feel terrible all the time. I don't know what has happened to Louise Françoise, and… and they're going to kill Cearl and I can't do anything about it. I feel sick and I can't eat properly without gagging."

She was fixed in a level stare. "Eat properly," Agnès said. "You will be weak if you don't eat. And your thoughts will be slowed. You're no use to the kingdom if you faint half-way through meetings."

"I know that!" Henrietta all-but wailed. "But I'm sick if I have more than mouthfuls!"

"Don't have more than mouthfuls, then." The utter flatness of that answer shocked the princess into giggles. "I mean that," Agnès continued. "If you can't keep down food due to nerves, then have small, frequent meals."

"Pragmatic advice as usual from my Chevalier," Henrietta sighed, deliberately forcing herself to smile, and twitching the curtains aside to wave out of the window. Sitting back, she slumped down. "And I feel guilty about feeling both hungry and sick when my dear Cearl is probably wasting away in jail, and only the Lord knows where Louise Françoise is," she said, mournfully. "Why, I would say…"

Whatever she had been about to say was lost in the deafeningly loud noise and splintering of wood. White-hot streaks of pain etched themselves along Henrietta's back and left side. Her jaw ached; her ears rung as if she had been under the cathedral bells at midday mass. She could only stare blankly in front of her, with eyes that could not accept that the front of the coach was... gone. Through the hole, she could see scarlet blood coating alabaster hide, seeping from unmoving meat. The other unicorn thrashed around in agony on the floor, one leg clearly broken, its screams terrifyingly reminiscent of a small child's. She half-threw herself forward, curling up even as the pain screamed in her nerves. Agnès was on top of her, a heavy, reassuring presence in a darkened, blurred world.

Though it could have only been seconds, there was no way she could have told an outsider how long she had been in that darkened, blurred state. Further thuds and booms sounded in the muffled distance and there was the meaningless clamour of human voices, slowed down ten times or more. And her nostrils were filled with copper and iron, giving the lack of light an undeniable red taint.

It was pain which bought herself back into her own mind; the pain of her own familiar nipping her legs. It was enough to bring her to the realisation that the hard presence on top of her was Agnès' armour, and instinctively the princess cast her sight through the eyes of the little beast. Shrieking in a thin, piercing noise, the dragonet uncurled. The runes on its flank were the bloody red of Taksony at its fullest, and they lit the mist it released in crimson hues.

Through its eyes, Henrietta could see the world in the strange light which it showed to her. There was no colour, not as she knew it, but through the river dragon she could see and feel the flows of water and of heat. The mist which the dragonet had released was almost transparent to it – though she knew from hard-gained experience that to human eyes it was unnaturally thick and cloying and as white as snow – and through it she could see the patters of moving water and heat it saw humans as. There was fast-cooling impure water on the street ahead, some of it heaped up into mounds, but the princess was more interested in the flow of the walking pillars of heated water Daphne saw people as.

Distantly, she heard Agnès roar, "Musketeers! To me!" but the voice was strangely double-heard. The muffled voice through her own ears was much weaker than the warped version her dragonet heard.

It was chaos. There were people scattering everywhere, and here the lack of visual acuity of a river dragon in the mist was something she could not handle, because there was no way that Henrietta could tell friend from foe from paralysed-with-fear commoner in the dragon's eyes. With a wrench, she pulled her mind free, just in time for Agnès to roll off her. The two of them were now surrounded in clammy, chill mist thick enough that visibility was perhaps only one metre, but that did not stop the crack and roar of bullets and it would not stop any spells thrown into the mist.

Henrietta made a noise of incoherent pain, and felt her jawline, fingers coming up red. "The… what's happening?" she asked, wiping off bloodslick fingers before drawing her wand.

Eyes gleaming, fresh cuts joining the scars on her face, Agnès flicked a glance in her direction. The coach was slumped down, the front wheels broken. As far as she could see in the dragon-fog, it looked as if a horde of giant wood-eating moths had been eating at it, so perforated was the vehicle. "Ambush," she snapped out through clenched teeth. "Get lower! That, that was a cannon, so we need to move, once we can be…" half-rising, she levelled a pistol through a hole in the coach, aimed with inhuman speed at a figure which moved towards them in the mist. There was only a fraction of a second before she fired, a sudden gust of unseen wind sending the mist dancing madly.

A figure in a musketeer's uniform dropped down, head almost smashed asunder by the shot. Henrietta gasped, horrified. "You…"

"She wasn't one of mine," the captain hissed through clenched teeth, dropping back down. She rammed her pistol back into its holster, and seized Henrietta's hand, drawing her sword with the other. "Run!" she ordered, yanking her princess to her feet like she was a child and kicking open the perforated door of the carriage. "Or they'll get the cannon reloaded. And 'svoid, get a water shield up!"

The profanity barely registered, but Henrietta pulled herself from her stupor. Stupid, stupid, stupid, how could she forget that? Was her mind filled with the same fog her dragon was making? Pulled behind Agnès like a toy, she forced out the shielding words drilled into her. Behind her, there was a splintering crash as a fist-sized rock – the kind a dot-class earth mage might use – punched through the top of the carriage, joining other similar such holes.

But the distraction did not break Princess Henrietta's focus, and a wall of water, frothing with seafoam, burst up from the ground carrying cobblestones with it. The ruins of the carriage were shredded by it, and the bubbling expanse, almost as thick as the princess was tall, trailed behind them.

Henrietta gritted her teeth. Chanting further, pushing herself she guided the water around them until it touched over the top, and they were surrounded. An egg of air ended barely above her blonde companion's head, and then around them was only seething foam laden with cobblestones, splintered wood, and the rubbish off the street.

The mist was clearing outside, drawn into the wall of water, and though the dirty liquid several figures, some of them wearing uniforms which looked like the ones worn by the royal musketeers, were levelling longarms at them. Agnès kept one grip on Henrietta's shoulder, and pushed the younger woman behind her, as the two of them kept retreating. "Founder grant that they fire," she whispered. "When they do, counter."

The cracks of the weapons were reduced to a muffled thud by the layers around the two women. Musketballs hit the water, and slowed or fractured, the broken pieces of metal joining the debris that twirled around them.

"Now!"

A recurring bark of the same word, over and over again. Horse-faced spears burst out of the foaming water with each spell-word, to impale or mutilate the armed figures. Panting, the princess fell silent when no more stood. "Cannon?" she managed, with no attention to spare for sentence structure. "Mage?"

Agnès peered through the filthy debris-cluttered water that surrounded them. "Both were coming from up high..." she said, quickly. "Second storey, I think."

"Yes," was all Henrietta said, before she began to chant. The water around them darkened, thickened strangely as she forced out syllables, and the scent of brine filled the air.

"Your highness..." the scarred woman began. It was so easy, sometimes, to forget that the crown heir was a triangle mage at the age of seventeen, personally tutored by some of the most skilled mages in the country. And even when one recalled it, it was always in the context of tricks and displays, like the casual fripperies she had shown off at the parties last summer, where she showed off refinement and control that lesser mages could not rival.

The princess spoke one last word. The wall of water erupted outwards, and if previous barbs had been single water-horses, this was a veritable cavalry charge of debris-laden foam. The horses' hooves tore up the ravaged ground as they thundered along, before smashing up into the building. The stone may have held, but the mortar could not withstand the fury of the oceans, and the stones were carried along in the path of the cavalcade.

Fury spent, the sea-horses fell apart, and all that was left was a ruined street littered with bodies and rubbish, a collapsing house and two drenched women standing on the street. Agnès recovered her wits first, and bodily seized her lady, throwing the princess over her shoulder. She kicked down the nearest door, wood splintering around her boot, and forced her way into the nearest room which did not face onto the street. The occupant was evicted at bladepoint, past the shrieking dragonet which scuttled in through the gap, and the door locked. And there she waited, for the relief she prayed would arrive before whatever reinforcements the foe would bring.

The clatter of hooves and the familiar voices which arrived within minutes was indeed a welcome relief.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The sun was setting outside. The sky, even through the smokes and fumes of the western half of Bruxelles, was a brilliant, beautiful red. It seemed a fitting marker to the blood which had been shed. Cardinal Mazarin stared out the window, and sighed, before turning back to the room. He, the princess and the scarred captain of the royal musketeers were in the crown heir's private quarters, and the surroundings were rather more lushly effeminate than he was used to or comfortable with.

Agnès cleared her throat. "I have examined the reports from the officer of the guard," she said, the corner of her mouth just where a scar ran across it twitching. "And examined the evidence. Your highness, the cannon used was a falconet, loaded with grapeshot." She paused for a moment. "That's a small design, fairly easy to move, your highness, but you would still need a carriage to move it into place, and a mage to levitate it into a house. And it was one reported missing from the army here in the capital itself three weeks ago. So far, news does not appear to have spread, but soon it will."

"One of my mother's own cannons," Henrietta said, wrapped in blankets. She had come down with shakes and chills after the escape, and her mind felt as foggy as the deepest mists of Ruling Water mornings.

"Who was behind it? That… that is the question," Cardinal Mazarin asked, knuckles white around his staff. "Who benefits… mmm… that is the question." Straightening up, the old man began to pace up and down, his voice rising as he went. "Commoner rebels… mmm… no, not very likely. To get hold of a cannon like that requires preparation and mages to help move it into place, so even if such a group would seem to be behind it, it is probably sign of some kind of external backing. Traitors among the nobility. Quite possible. There is… mmm… uncertainty in the line of succession, and there are many families who would like to see the throne kept weak, who have benefitted from Her Majesty's indisposition after the death of the Prince Consort.

"There is, of course, another issue, and that is the Germanian connection," the cardinal continued, wheezing faintly. "Both factions here and in Germania itself would oppose this marriage. If others among the Elector-Khans have found out about it, they know that the Germanian Emperor may be able to anchor his power in the princess… and their children will be Brimiric monarchs. It would be a crisis of the Faith for one to be overthrown for a non-Brimiric replacement. Which means there may also be a Romalian connection; elements of the Holy Mother Church might be corrupt and trying to avoid a foreseen schism. There is always Gallia, though I doubt King Joseph is behind it; he is weak and detached from the world… but his daughter? Ah, I would not trust her, from what the ambassador says of her – she is a fey woman, fickle and yet sharp and callous to others. Or Gallian border lords, looking to eat up snatches of Tristain if we are weakened. Or…"

"Y-you're going on and on," Henrietta managed, through chattering teeth and a fog which filled her world, "but it was the Albionese traitors." Tears ran down her cheeks, and she spat the last word. "They're… they're killing my dear sweet Cearl, and… and they tried to kill me too."

The cardinal sighed, and paused in his pacing. He rested one hand on the clammy brow of the princess. "Your highness," he said, in a warning tone of voice, "do not say such things. In your grief and… mmm… shock, you may accidentally say things that could be misunderstood by malicious ears." He shook his head. "And my dear, you are so cold and so clammy. If you can avoid saying further things of that ilk, we can send for healers and…"

"There's no need to fuss so," Agnès said to the cardinal, speaking over Henrietta's head. "Her nerves are shocked. She's like a raw recruit after her first battle. She'll be fine given time. And her injuries are a pittance."

"The beauty of our princess is an asset in itself," the old man objected. "She… mmm… cannot be allowed to scar!"

"We should not raise our voices around her; shouting disturbs those afflicted as she is," the captain of the musketeers said, gesturing the cardinal away from where the princess was seated, to another corner of the room. "And how long have you known about her… involvement with the Prince Wales," the blonde woman said, her voice suddenly as soft as velvet.

"I know about no such thing," Cardinal Mazarin said, blandly. "If I knew about it, I would have had to condemn it, and I could not do so and maintain her trust in me while I taught her." He tapped his fingers against his staff. "I may have had some words with the prince and… mmm… impressed on him how the Church would look… ill… upon any improper deeds and how at a time of civil war it would be best not to lose sight of what was really important."

A short bark of laughter worked its way out of Agnès' lungs, the scars at the edge of her lips cracking and bleeding as an uncharacteristic smile crossed her face. "You old robin," she whispered, once she had herself back under control, "that explains a lot."

"It must be said, I would have preferred that the Royalists win, albeit weakened," the cardinal explained. "We must chain ourselves to the Iron Dragon and hope we can ride out his hunger from atop his head, because we can no longer rely on the Albionese. Oh, for could-have-beens. If the Royalists had won, we could have been the vital marriage they needed to fortify their position and repay their many, many debts. Instead, we are the noble house marrying its daughter to traders and bankers 'lest the creditors come knocking." The man paused. "Save that it would not be creditors that the Iron Dragon would send, but armies. No, better that he devour the Otmani states and even turn his greedy eyes on ill-ruled Gallia than he look at us.

"And that is why I fear that we should not look too hard at the Albionese for our suspicions. There are those in Germania who do not want imperial authority to be centralised, to be tied to a single dynasty, and that is what the emperor wishes. If we were conquered by Germania when weakened by war, then he would have to share the lands between the other Elector-Khans. The marriage would avoid that, and that is what I fear others may have realised." He shook his head. "We do not want a war with Albion. Not yet, and not ever, if God smiles upon us." He sniffed. "War is expensive and wasteful. And thus to be avoided if at all possible."

"Stop… stop whispering in the corner over there!" Henrietta called out, punctuated by things that were half-sobs and half-hiccups. "I… Agnès, have you seen to the… the… the loyal musketeers that died out there? What… what do we say? What do we do?"

"I will deal with things, your highness," the blonde woman said as she hurried back over to the girl, bringing with her the scent of blackpowder. "This is all my concern."

"You… you know what is funny?" Henrietta gasped, through tears. "Those three girls? They're… they're probably still waiting f-f-for me to dine with them. I… I hope they don't go too hungry. C-C-Cardinal, pl-please make my apologies to them. Especially m-m-my royal cousin."

"Hysteria," Agnès said flatly. "To be expected. I'll put her to bed, and we will see how she is in the morning."

The cardinal made a contemplative noise, one hand going to feel his gladiform necklace. "Yes. That… mmm… would probably be for the best," he said.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"And that's when the whole darn thing just exploded on me!" declared the Marquess de Heusden, to chuckles. He clapped his hands, and a servant appeared, bottle in hand. "Just another half," he said, holding up his glass.

The palace was visible through the fine glass windows which made up one wall of this intimate dining room. The rest of the building was the seamless stone walls of the high nobility, hung with elaborate tapestries. The pride of place was a silk work all the way from far-distant Cathay, imported via circuitous routes. The five nobles dining here spared little attention for this, though, because this was an entirely tolerable display of wealth – tasteful, and not too gauche. The musicians were a soft refrain in the background, playing a courtly piece with a distinctly Romalian air, which undercut the buzz of conversation.

The Duchess de la Vallière sighed, and glanced out at the palace. Part of here wished that she was not here, having to engage in conversation and the necessary power plays of the high nobility. She wanted to be home with her husband and middle daughter. And the part of her that did not long to be with her family knew she had other things that she had to see done in the capital. But the marquess was an old friend – albeit in the sense that others would have used the word 'acquaintance' to describe – and it would have been impolitic to refuse.

"Did you hear?" the Duchess de Bruxelles intruded, leaning back in her seat to stroke her familiar-falcon that perched beside her. "A little bird told me that there was an assassination attempt against the crown princess today!"

There was a rumble of surprise from others at the table.

"Did it succeed?" the Count de Mott asked, toying with a nut in one hand, and a nutcracker in the other.

"No, it seems it was not successful," the lilac-haired duchess said. "I think it does raise real questions about how effective that plaything-company the princess is raising can really be, though, if that sort of thing can get through."

Karin's face remained entirely blank. She found the duchess' voice to be exceptionally annoying, and the fact that her husband was not invited to these dinners to be all too telling. Everyone knew that Eloise de Bruxelles had found someone with an exquisite bloodline and wonderful looks, but whose mind was filled with hunting and wh... women. "People have said that the princess pushes the definition of 'personal bodyguard' rather too far with it," she said.

The Count de Mott snorted. "Better she waste money on her little plaything of inexprimé musketeers rather than anything else. Now, me, I rather fancy that she might be planning something down the line with them, but for now, nothing."

"She is certainly the type for it," the marquess said. "It's that damnable cardinal. Mazarin is an ill-bred cur of the type the Church seems to promote above their station, and I fear he is leading us and the princess alike into disaster."

"I know what you mean," Eloise de Bruxelles commented. "He has too much influence; he's barely first minister and more like King-in-all-but-name. It's disgraceful."

The man shook his head. "In my very humble opinion, that's why I think the Gallians are mad. Look at the way that they only seem to end up with one sibling of any given generation left. A tree has to be allowed to branch, or it blossoms poorly. Instead, they cut off most of the branches of the family and breed the others together."

"What's that got to do with anything?" the Count de Mott snapped.

The marquess bristled. "Well, isn't it obvious? If only the Queen had more children, we wouldn't be so hostage to the whims of a single heir and her puppetmaster. He damn well knows her Majesty is useless, and there is only one heir. No one wants any uncertainty, so there can be none of the usual give and take of declaring heirs. Of course," the man tilted his head, and took a sip from his glass, "I do admit, there is the problem that sometimes you end up with a King Joseph – that man is more cuckoo than a springtime nest – when you really would have preferred his brother if you were a Gallian, but," he gave a chuckle, "as I said, Gallians are mad."

"Some people might say that even damnable uncertainty would be better than a clergyman leading us into the hands of Romalia – or Germania, because he is a low-born swine and embezzler," the Count de Mott observed.

The Duchess de Bruxelles called for more wine. "It is true, the last few years have been rather profitable," she said, while it was being poured. "The invisible hand of God has surely blessed our income. Why, we really should thank Him for the freedom from meddlesome royals who waste money on building large ships named after themselves! While none of us want a throne as weak as Gallia's, because that's bad, of course..."

"Of course," echoed the Count de Mott.

"... well, I think Albion is an example of what happens when the royalty gets too big for its boots, and forgets from whose purses they draw their funds. A healthy middle, that's the way! Like the last few years. In fact," the woman said, rising with a flick of her long hair, "to the present! Long may it continue to be as it is!"

"To the present!"

There was drinking, and enjoyment, and carousing. And when the night was done, the Duchess de la Vallière made her excuses, and left the smoke-filled dining room, accompanied by the Marquise de Heusdan. She was a pale, wan, almost ghost-like woman who lived in her husband's shadow, and much like pink-haired duchess beside her, she had been saying little, and drinking less.

"He is a drunkard and a braggart," the marquise said softly, as the two women made their way through dark halls. The single candle held by the shorter woman, white-haired despite her mere three decades, was the sole source of light. "Not excusable, but understandable as a vice."

"I do understand," the duchess said.

"The market prices of grain, flour, sulphur, Germanian iron ore and cloth are up. The price of gold and fine-cut jewels are down. Purchases are being made for war."

"Is that so?"

"It would seem to be, wouldn't it?" The marquise turned. "But any fool can see that the Albionese will move soon; even before New Castle fell they had most of their fleet ready in Port's Mouth. No, what worries me is the Germanian connection. I have read the stars, and the stars of the monarchy touch to embrace the stars of Germania, before pulling away. But I cannot see why they would touch, and that worries me. Further action may need to be taken to prevent such a thing."

"I see," said Karin. "But... Elizibet, I do have a favour to ask. It may be doable before I leave. We should head to your observatory. I want to see if you can find someone; everyone else has failed."

The pale woman shook her head. "Not with this weather," she said with a sigh. "I do so hate how it gets here in Bruxelles. Ghastly place. Traps all the clouds from any winds from the south before the mountains."

"Oh." The pink-haired woman shook her head. "We should meet again, before I head home. Without those bores and drunks."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Clad in only her nightdress, bent in supplication upon her bed, Henrietta de Tristain prayed. She prayed with the prayers not taught to lesser men, the prayers which called upon her blood ties to the Founder Brimir and the ones she had overheard as a child while sneaking around the cathedral here in Bruxelles. For Prince Cearl she poured out her heart and her grief, until her bedsheet was stained with tears. Prayers of wrath and hate for those who would see him dead – and her too – mingled with babbles for protection for loved ones and salvation, until she fell silent, voice too weary to speak any more.

There was no response. Nothing, but the night time noise of the city slinking in through her window; nothing but a draft coming up from under her floorboards. The Church said that God was above such things, that – unlike the lesser spirits which pagans and Protestants consorted with – His will was made eminent on the world and in the stars. Henrietta knew it to be true, believed it to be true.

But it was so hard, sometimes, especially when one already skirted certain teachings of the Church in the name of the good of one's country. Why couldn't God send a messenger-spirit, to convey His messages rather than writing them in the stars? At times of tragedy and grief, she could all too well see how Protestants fell into their heretical ways.

And where was Louise de la Vallière? Where was her friend? Why could no astrologer find her?

"Founder, Lord, God," she whispered, hands clasped together. "Saints above, please, I beg of you. Protect Louise Françoise, and bring her to safety. Fire light her path, air carry her safely, earth ward her and water heal her wounds. Lord, I beg this of you. Void protect my beloved friend."

Rising, Henrietta made her way to the window, and gazed up at the moons. Where ever she was, she hoped that Louise could see them too. Maybe the moonlight would carry her prayers and give her friend strength.

* * *

{0}


	16. 15: A Serpent Nursing

******A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 15: A Serpent Nursing**

* * *

{0}

* * *

Lying on her bed curled into a ball, Louise stared up at the moons through the window-wall. They seemed so very far away.

And through the mists and the smogs of Londinium, so unlike the view from her window at the Academy or back home, they seemed even further. Founder. God. Malfeas. She missed home. She missed the quiet of the Academy, where she could choose to lock herself in her room away from people, rather than be confined like this. She missed her books. She even – and this was clearly a sign she was going crazy from the isolation – missed petty bickering with Kirche.

But if there was nostalgia and self-pity in her mind, it was drowned out by the hate. Sometimes it burned bright with acrid rage. Sometimes it waited, sullen and bitter, enduring and waiting for that deeply unpleasant woman to make just _one _mistake and let her have her chance. But neither hate diminished. And neither had any room within them for forgiveness.

And there was another hate simmering deep in there. Oh yes.

If she had been pregnant, that shot might have killed the child. It might not have. Her fingers went to press against the blood-stained patch on her clothes. All she knew was the finger-deep pockmark under the livid scar was right in her lower abdomen. It was roughly the right area for her womb, which was somewhere around there – she wasn't quite sure exactly where it sat. She had never paid much attention in the anatomy lessons she had had from her tutors, because she had been fairly sure she had not been a water mage despite her father's element, and even if she had been, she hadn't wanted to be a healer.

Now, though, she really wished she knew. Because if she knew, she would know if she needed to add another crime to the lists of that _thing-woman _dressed in black.

But she did not know. And so she stayed confined, letting the hunger pangs and the pain from her wound drive her onwards. Taking a deep breath, Louise focussed on all her pain and hate and self-pity, and let it out in a scream. The yell began deep in her body, as if it had its source right in the injury, and tore its way out from the hidden places of her soul. That was good. Yes. Let her watchers, human guards and _other _things wake in the middle of the night. Let them hear her screams. They would remember the screaming and not anything else she did.

Louise closed her eyes, and shuddered, then gasped in pain as her stomach muscles protested. The injury that dark-coated woman had given her was healing. Slowly. She had held the wound closed, following Marisalon's instructions, as fast as possible, and the skin had just... sealed over the top. Now she had a livid scar perhaps two fingerwidths beneath her navel, and stabbing pains whenever she moved.

She had not needed the neomah to tell her that this was a sign that it was not yet healed. If her blooded, bruised hands still ached, she did not need her head-familiar to tell her that sharp pain was not a sign of wellness. That she was healing at all from such an injury was a miracle in its own way, but her body now was full of such wonders and at the moment, it hurt enough that she had no room for amazement.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The sun rose through the dank, clinging mists of Albion, cutting through the clouds but weakly. The smokes of the city rose to replace what fog burned away, as fires were stoked and fresh fuel fed to furnaces. The pink-haired prisoner of the fifth cell was awake to see it all. It was the sixth morning she had seen in this manner, and it dawned no prettier for her than the last.

No sleep; merely the agony of tedious awareness. To sleep would be to have nightmares, but at least they would be something other than the confinement of this cell.

Unless she would have nightmares about imprisonment. If that were to happen, she would be doubly trapped, unable to retreat even to fantasy.

There was a cough from the neomah inside her mind. "_My fair lady,_" Marisalon chided her, "_you are being somewhat morose and self-pitying. As I said to you yesterday – and the day before that, and the day before that – such things do not aid your keen and brilliant mind in its goal of figuring out a method of escape._"

Louise sighed, and wriggled upon her prison-bed. 'I... can't see a way,' she thought. 'I can't stop that... that utterly horrible woman killing me if she sees me trying to escape.' One hand went to her abdomen. 'I need to escape. I know it. But I can't even _try _to break the door down.' She paused, taking a slow, pained breath. 'And this whole building is alive. Who knows what it sees?'

"_Please, I implore you, my lady, to consider what assets you bring to male guards, and..._"

'Oh shush,' the girl thought. 'Do you know anything about living buildings like this?'

"_Not in so many words... I doubt it is a mighty creature of the Second Circle or – Endless Desert forbid – one of the Third._"

That had been a terrifying realisation. She had a third hidden eye on her forehead, Louise had discovered, and it saw in scents and tastes and touches which formed a maddening overlay of every single sense where it stared. When she opened it – and there was sense of familiarity about it, as if she had known about it for longer and simply never known that she knew it – she could see the walls of this place. See how they pulsed, how they throbbed, how they beat. And she could see the three things inside her cell.

They were not always here. They were not here right now, she knew, and their arrival usually accompanied the Sheffield woman, flowing in through the slit in the door her food was passed through. That might be a way out. It might not. All she could do was keep an eye out.

She thought of them by how they felt. Gem-hot-bitter, salty-sharp-woman, and sweet-purple-sour, she called the three amorphous figures – two humanoid, the third more akin to something spider-like.

The pink-haired girl was sure that they were spirits, and that was a sin in the Sheffield's books, because that meant that she was a Protestant! Of all the things!

The rattle of that slot broke her attention from those thoughts, and she raised her head from the bed to see her breakfast passed through the heavy iron door. Thick rye bread, a selection of spreads and cold meats, cheese and bacon.

Lord and Founder, it was _so hard _to resist. Hard, and getting harder every day. This was not like in literature at all. It was not a thin gruel or anything one might expect them to feed a prisoner who they wanted to suffer. It was good, solid food; the kind of thing the lower nobility might dine on.

The scent of the bacon _wafted_.

"_My lady,_" Marisalon cautioned her. "_You are drooling in an indelicate manner._"

And that was why she had to refuse it. The first time she had tried to eat, she had got half-way through the meal before an unpleasant feeling remarkably similar to being drunk had started to worm its way into her skull. She was Louise de la Vallière, third daughter of one of the oldest and most noble families in all of the four Brimiric nations. She knew the symptoms of sedatives, drugs and poisons, and she knew what to do if one feared that one had ingested them. There were none of the proper emetics or water mages here right now, but she had her fingers.

The girl had still spent hours in a not-all-there stupor despite her best efforts, and she had felt drained by the effort of throwing it off.

The worst thing about this was that there were potions which were far more effective sedatives than whatever had been used on her. Fouquet's activities had been proof of that; transmuted crystallised reagent had been enough to take a hall full of people down in seconds in much smaller concentrations than that. Whatever the Sheffield-woman had used – well, Louise did not want to know. She clung to the fact that she would rather die than betray Princess Henrietta, for she feared that such a certainty must inevitably be put to the test.

Pulling herself painfully to her feet, the girl made her way over to the food. Hands shaking, she quickly sorted out small portions of what she permitted herself. The "rules" when one could not trust one's food were simple. Minimal water intake, spread throughout the day. Nothing strongly flavoured – it could be used to conceal more potent drugs. Nothing with high levels of fat – certain potions with particularly efficacious results in the human body dissolved better within grease than they did in water. Many of the more potent alchemical substances were rendered inert by heat, so there were certain foodstuffs which could be trusted more than others – any additions would have to be made after they were cooked, and that meant it was harder to conceal the taste. It was a small mercy that the Sheffield-woman did not seek her death, though she would still have to be wary of small amounts of poisons intended to sicken and weaken her.

What she allowed herself was thin. The bread could be hoarded, and eaten in small amounts, just like the water. The hard cheeses likewise could be saved, in small amounts, but the soft ones – sadly – could not be trusted. The cold beef, the ham, the bacon... no. Perhaps one thin slice of cold beef, but the rest had to go.

Her stomach grumbled, as did the neomah in her head. But this... this dreadful mistreatment of a noble prisoner – forcing her to waste fine soft cheese in this manner! – would not change if she complained. Not to the Sheffield woman, at least.

So she did the next best thing she could, to resist temptation and rid herself of the scent of food. Green fire flared around her hands and in the bowl. The discarded food burned to fine white ash.

Slowly, painfully, Louise made her way back to her bed, and began to chew on scraps of rye bread and hard Albionese cheese, mourning her loss of proper goat's cheese.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The ancient wood of the room was age and smoke-darkened, and stood in sharp contrast to the ceiling. The roof, enchanted and beautified, resembled the sky outside. Golem-birds swooped and flew above, the ravens of Londinium cast in black marble.

And below, the five judges in sober black resembled ravens in their own right. Like predatory birds the three men and two women perched at their semi-circle of lecterns. Each had a wand-mace before them, the implements of their office. Once the mage-judges would have sat beneath the seal of the Crown for every judgement, and in truth this was the last place where that seal still stood.

Some might have called it perverse, to keep that icon displayed when it was the Crown itself in the dock. But that was fully intentional. This trial would be conducted entirely within the rules and laws of the Crown of Albion. It was vital that it be seen, abroad and within Albion itself, that justice be carried out. All niceties and all precisions would be enforced. Every 'i' would be dotted and every 't' would be crossed. Even the pope himself should be unable to find a single flaw in how the prosecution carried out its duties.

In some eyes, it was a sign of the weakness of the new regime that they had to do such a thing. And Oliver Cromwell, who set in the audience glaring down at the arrogant young man and shaking little girl in the dock, had to confess that it was true. It rankled at him. But he was the one who had declared that this would be done. This mummery, this pageant, would play out in full. They had their living royals.

Now to tighten the thumbscrews and heat the metal boots. The last remnants of the Crown would dance to their role in his script, and the Holy Republic would have the legitimacy it needed.

And in the meantime, Sheffield would get that evidence which would cripple Tristain's legitimacy and at the same time keep it out of the rapacious and fearsome jaws of the Germanian Emperor.

If he had to sit through a few weeks of tedious trial led by judges of the Holy Republic wearing the robes of the discredited monarchy… well, patience was a virtue. The man cleared his throat, and half-turned in his seat to look back at Sheffield. "How fares our... other guest?" he asked, delicately.

Dead-eyed, the woman stared back at him. "She is refusing food for no good reason," she said without blinking. "She eats mere crumbs, and then exhausts herself with violent exercise."

Cromwell began to gnaw on his lip. That, on the other hand, was something which could not be solved with righteous patience. "Have you tried to force-feed her?" he asked. "We need her alive. Better still if she would be persuaded of the justness of the Holy Republic, and would cooperate willingly."

Something flashed across Sheffield's face, an unusual flicker of emotion which ventured onto unfamiliar territory and departed before the man could identify it. "The latter is not plausible," she said. "As for the former; not yet. She is violent and..."

The man gave a half-chuckle. "She is a mere slip of a girl, and you took away her wand. Surely a few burly men would be all that would be needed for..."

"A few 'burly men'," Sheffield interrupted, audible tongue-clicks slotting into place, "would not be enough. Instead, I permit her no contact. I provide her with no change of clothes, no washing waters, no soap. I rouse her irregularly during the night. She can starve herself if she wishes; then she will fall unconscious. That is..." her lips twitched, "... quite adequate for my purposes. If she will not be reasonable, than I will punish her."

Cromwell unconsciously leaned back from the fell feelings which radiated off the black-clad woman. "Well, I cannot tell you 'do what is necessary' and keep my own hands clean, and then complain about your methods," he said, more to himself than her. "But... is that not a little inhumane? Would it not be kinder to simply drug her?"

"You do not wish to know such things." A pause. "Sire."

The man blinked. "Oh yes, yes yes," he said, settling his shoulders. "Carry on as you were," he added, turning around to resume attention to the trial.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Days passed. The walls remained annoyingly proof against walking through, and the boredom of the Viscountess Wardes could only grow and grow. Though she felt faint with hunger and her throat nagged for water, she would not give in. She burned what food she did not permit herself to ashes, to avoid being tempted, and evaporated the water to leave dampness on the walls.

The hunger grew and grew, worse than the thirst; she did not sweat and did not urinate, so her needs were slighter there. The pains in her stomach outgrew the pains from the wound. But she was the daughter of the Duke and Duchess de la Vallière, trusted subject – and friend – to Princess Henrietta. She would not give in!

Even if Marisalon, voice growing more and more worried, nattered to her about various matters she could not bring herself to care about, in the vain hope that she would save her strength.

Now she was angry again. Leaping up, she went looking for her favourite target. The rug had been rolled up, and now stood as a man-sized cylinder in the corner of the room. Her pillow was pretending to be its head. Louise propped it against her bed, and prowled in front of the pseudo-human. Her feet were cold against the bare stone, but she ignored the discomfort.

Skip left, weave. Punch-punch. Skip right, and bring her leg around in a kick. Jump on the fallen rug, and punch it repeatedly in its 'chest'. Get up, and try again.

It was boring practice, training like how she had seen some of the boys back at the Academy messing around with leather bags filled with sand. Boring, and annoying that she had to go pick the rug up again. But at least it was less boring than lying on her back on her bed in this white-painted room, staring up at the ceiling. And beating up the rug made her feel better. Leave her alone in here much longer, and she'd start climbing the walls.

Louise paused, puffing out a breath to blow a loose strand of hair out of her face. Hah. Go crazy. Crazy from being locked up alone. Crazy from having no one to talk to but the voice in her head and the dream-fragments of her who did things like walk around naked while being made of brass, or attempt to do... perverted things to her while being her own shadow. Yes, she certainly wouldn't want to go crazy or anything.

Then she could go back to beating up the rug. Then maybe she could go back to trying to read the Albionese books they had left in here, which was a language she could read better than she could speak – in that she could make educated guesses for some works, rather than be lost in commoner babble when they spoke it. After that... well, she could try moving back onto some more rug-directed violence.

And then maybe collapse from hunger. Yes. Collapse into shallow, nightmare-wracked sleep – but nightmares were not worse than this.

"_My most exquisitely fair lady,_" Marisalon said in a mollifying tone, "_if that is true, then we can resume our efforts on teaching you the First Language from where we left off yesterday. You know, before you decided you were bored of that, and decided to see how long you could stand on your head._"

Louise nodded. That had been productive in its own way. It seemed that as long as she didn't think about _how _she was doing it, her sense of balance was much-improved. It had also revealed that thinking about it led to self-doubt, and falling over.

"_Even if you have no inks to work on the character set, at least we can work on the vocabulary and the like. Please, sit yourself down, my lady._"

"I have a better suggestion," Louise whispered to herself, lips thin with annoyance. "Why don't you just let me exercise in peace? We can do that sort of thing later. I really don't feel like it now."

"_I... my lady... I..._" Marisalon fell silent, though with ill-grace. "_... as you wish, my lady_."

Louise gritted her teeth, muscles bunching under her dress. It was crumpled and would have been entirely intolerable to wear had she sweated – she had been given no fresh clothes since that very first bath, on the first night. It was bloodstained and torn, and it did not quite sit right on her frame. She had lost weight. And – sudden wooziness overcame her, and she clutched her forehead, swaying.

When the pink-haired girl opened her eyes again, everything was wrong. Different.

Wide-eyed, she stared up at a ceiling above her so high that clouds were forming within the chamber. No more was she confined within a single room, or if she was... Lord, were those walls made of glass? If that was true, how on earth did they support the lusciously painted ceiling above her? And the floor... it was, and was not grass, she realised, bending down to stroke it. It felt soft, luscious and plant-like, but it seemed to be made of emerald and green jade rather than anything which lived normally.

Louise laughed. Oh, of course. She had fainted and was dreaming. That was the only thing which made sense. It was not as if she had magically been teleported from her confinement to... to this beautiful place of gold and silver and glory. No, she was just going having a dream which tormented her by promising freedom when she was imprisoned.

"Marisalon!" she yelled. "Get your lilac backside in here!"

There was no response from the neomah, not even from within her skull. Idly, Louise smoothed down her cloth-of-gold dress with an olive-skinned hand, and considered her choices. Yes, if she took the radiant bridge via the third ring, then...

... wait, an olive-coloured hand? Wide-eyed, she stared down at the pale skin of the back of her hand. She checked her other hand. No, that was also normal. Scrabbling, she checked a lock of hair, and was reassured by its natural pink colour.

Maybe... maybe she had just mistaken the brass colour for brown, out of the colour of her eye. That sort of thing happened to her in nightmares, finding that her skin was made of brass and... and that was when the dawning horror hit her.

Her nails _weren't _made of brass. They were short, bitten and entirely natural. And that was uncanny in its own right, because she had not bitten her nails since she had been a very little girl. It simply wasn't done. Her nails never had been in this state, even before they had been transmuted into brass.

A bubbling hiccup escaped from her mouth. Louise started to giggle. Look at her! Getting panicked because her nails weren't mystically transmuted into living brass! Being worried about them being bitten!

It was laugh, or cry.

"Marisalon!" she called out again, her voice catching.

No response, and she pulled herself to her feet again. Something in her knew where to go (_along the great radiant causeway, up the infinite stairs, cross the balcony of the north wind_) and she listened to it, for lack of anything else to do. Her legs did not ache, despite the time – it felt like hours – spent climbing strange stairs which moved under her feet and walking along bridges and gantries which were composed entirely of magical light.

And the people. Such strange people. Hair all colours; some commoner browns, blacks and blonds, others more noble reds and pinks and greens and blues, and faces which covered every ethnicity she knew and many beyond that. There were even stranger things here. Things which mixed man and beast, figures whose skin seemed more akin to metal than flesh, and she almost screamed at the sight of armoured golem-men like the figures from La Rochelle.

They knelt to her. All of them. Man and beast and man-beast and golem and even the armoured monsters she had feared since La Rochelle. Their words hovered at the edges of understanding, and she knew they were respectful.

And suddenly, before her, was the thing she had been searching for without knowing. The great window, trimmed with blue (_thrice-radiant adamant, trimmed with purest blue jade extracted from the depths of the landless chill of the Air Pole, domain of Mela_), opened up, and looking north she gazed out over the Bl...

... over the mists and smogs of small, petty, mean Londium. Louise gasped as if she had been slapped, only partly from the pain in her gut as she leant up against the transparent window.

She whirled. The cell was no larger, and she was just as confined. She... she had walked for hours to take a few steps to the window. All that time... had she even moved at all. She... she was feeling very, very faint.

"_My lady,_" the neomah asked carefully, "_whatever is the matter?_"

"Why didn't you hear me?" the pink-haired girl whispered, head sagging down into her hands as she slumped back onto her bed. "Oh... yes," she said, as sudden realisation struck, and she curled up into a ball.

"_What?_"

'I'm going crazy in here.' Her tears began to leak into her pillow, making it unpleasantly damp. 'I think I'm going crazy in here, and as I lose my mind, I start seeing things.'

A burble escaped her mouth.

'And if you don't know about it, I... I don't think it's meant to happen so you can't even help me with it,' she managed, her nose starting to run. 'M-Marisalon. I'm... I'm scared of it.' Feeling like a small child, she continued, 'I can't do anything. I... I went mad in New Castle, and... and I see things, and I'm... talking to the voice in my head because it's the only thing which will talk to me and... it might be able to help.'

She rolled over, and burrowed her head into her wet pillow. "I want to go home," she muttered into it.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"... and so for accomplishment of such their designs, and for the protecting of themselves and their adherents in their sinful practices, the accused to the same ends have traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Desbattion, and the people therein represented." The adpursuant, clad in robes as blue as the summer's sky cleared her throat, hard eyes locked on the two figures bound in the dock. "As the Desbattion, within its remit of the collection of sundry taxes and such like for the Crown, acts directly in the name of the throne of Albion, and furthermore acts to speak for and protect the Crown-and-God-given rights and privileges of Albion, such an act is, by the terms lain out by Her Majesty Queen Isobel I, a most foul deed which encompasses high treason."

"You have no such authority save what you have treacherously stolen!" the Prince Wales snapped. "I do not recognise the authority of this court!"

"The accused will be quiet," stated the prime judge, a black-robed figure perched at his lectern. "He will have a chance to defend himself."

"Many thanks, your honour," the adpursant said, inclining her head before she continued, "Under the charges legitimately laid out in the name of this court and on behalf of the Crown, the wicked designs, wars, and evil practices of the defendants, the said Cearl of the House of Stewart, and Sophia likewise of the House of Stewart, have been, and are carried on for the advancement and upholding of a personal interest of will, power, and pretended prerogative to themselves and their family, against the public interest, common right, liberty, justice, and peace of the Crown and the people of this nation."

"This is ridiculous!" the blonde man managed, muscles bunching as if he would spread his arms wide in utter bewilderment at the insanity of the world. "Utterly mad! If my father is dead, then I am the King and the King cannot be tried for crimes against the Crown! Mad, I say!"

"The defendant will be quiet and permit the adpursuit to lay out their case, or he will be gagged," said the prime judge, a sneer twitching across his ancient wrinkled face. "Consider this your last warning, sirrah."

Cearl's face twitched at the insult, but he bit back at the retort. His gaze skittered across the room, lingered on the hated face of Oliver Cromwell, before it ended up on his younger sister beside him. She was wan and red-eyed from tears, still clammy from when she had been sick out of sheer nervousness. This was the only time when he got to see her; Founder only knew what might be happening to her when they were taken away to their separate cells.

The adpursant cleared her throat again. "In this indictment, therefore, the adpursuit does accuse the defendants to be guilty in full of all the treasons, murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, damages and mischiefs to this nation, acted and committed in the said wars, or occasioned thereby. These being too many and too wicked to list in full, the adpursuit has no, in accordance with the law of Albion, submitted in text the full listings of those deeds to this court and to the Crown's royally-appointed agents in the form of the current party of the Desbattion – being the rightful agents in such manner given that we are tragically without a reigning monarch and both his lineal heirs stand accused of high treason. As per the Indictment Act, such a listing has been approved by the Crown in full, and so such a recital is not needed now." She folded her hands in front of her body, and bowed her head. "So ends the initial statement and accusation of the adpursuit. God bless the Crown."

"So may it be," echoed the five judges sat up at the front of the court.

"We will now take the pleas of the defendants," continued the prime judge. "How plead you, your highness, to these most vile and heinous crimes?"

Prince Cearl Stewart, the Prince Wales glared back at the black-robed judges. "This court has no authority over me," he said. "I cannot and will not recognise any right to try to try the crown prince for crimes against the Crown. No learned lawyer, no wise councillor would gainsay such a thing, and so I must cast most suspicious gazes towards those who could condone such unlawful acts.

"Indeed, I would wish to know by what authority this court even claims to hold this session. What lawful authority, for we all know that it truly rests on the detestable whims of brute-force bought with gold plundered from Londinium. Fie, gentlemen! You cast the name of the Crown around you with serpent's tongues, and claim that the Desbattion is an agent of Albion, rather than a nest of treacherous rats who squirm and twist within their stinking warren beside the river Temes. You say you act in the name of the Crown and you murder the King and dress up your blows against the princes of the blood in the name of your loyalty to him! This is a farce, a show put up for the degenerates seated in the stands who..." and any further thing he would have said was cut off. Though his lips moved, no words could be heard.

"Let the record be noted that Cearl of the House of Stewart chose not to speak in his own defence, and was gagged for his contemptuous acts against this court," the red-coated official said, lowering his wand. "So speaks the Sergeant-at-Arms."

"The actions of the Sergeant-at-Arms are acknowledged by the court, and approved," the ancient wrinkled judge said. "The individual entitled as the Prince Wales has indeed chosen not to speak or gainsay the initial statement and accusation of the adpursuit. This stands by custom and God-given law as a _pro confessio _admission of guilt; damned by his own words." The old man resettled his robes, to muttering from the gallery and the judges around him, and directed his gaze towards Princess Sophia. "And you," he said to the little girl, "how plead you, your highness, to these most vile and heinous crimes?"

The Princess Hibernia seemed not to respond to the question at first. Slowly, she raised reddened eyes from where she had been staring down at the floor.

The judge shifted, and cleared his throat. "Please, I would have your plea," he said, a slight hint of softness entering his voice.

The blonde girl tried to wipe her eyes, but her bound hands made that impossible. "I," she said, in a tiny voice, "... I... why are you doing this? I haven't... what did I do wrong? I..." a bubbling, choking sob forced its way out, "... I'm sorry for... what did I even do?"

There was muttering from the five judges up at the front, and the adpursuant threw a carefully neutral glance at the royal child. Whispers from the gallery of viewers echoed around the courtroom, and at least some of the overtones heard hinted that the treatment of a nine-year old in this manner was not without some controversy. Cromwell himself was leaning forwards in his seat, knuckles white around the railings in front of him.

"The Court believes that plea to be a plea of innocence," the prime judge said, after the consultation. "We would have you confirm that you wish to state, before Crown and Court, that you plead not guilty to the long and manifold lists of crimes laid against you."

Princess Sophia nodded, lip wobbling. Her attempts to look towards her brother for assistance or advice were futile, for the spell of silence laid upon him was still in place.

"So be it," all five judges said together.

"The pleas have been entered and recorded," stated the green-clad scribe sitting before the lecterns. "For Cearl of the House of Stewart, a plea of guilt by _pro confessio _; for Sophia of the House of Stewart, a plea of innocence."

"This court of law shall hereby enter recess for the day," stated the prime judge, rising. "Tomorrow, we reconvene, to begin the main body of the trial for Sophia of the House of Stewart. An warden-proctor shall be appointed to confer with her and conduct her defence." His nose wrinkled. "As for Cearl of the House of Stewart, he stands a man condemned. His presence is no longer required in these matters, and he should be consigned to the Bloodied Cells of the Tower hencewith. I would advise him, if he is a faithful son of the Church, to find his peace with Lord and Founder with whatsoever priests he wishes to consult with, for, as has been vouchsafed previously, he will hang for his crimes against Albion."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Exhausted, hunger-wracked, Louise eventually collapsed into shallow sleep. She knew she could have avoided it, could merely have lain there staring at the ceiling too weak to move... but that would be a far worse nightmare than anything her mind could have stewed up.

As she stared out over the green-lit burning fields of her parents' land, she felt like giggling. Sleep... was a choice. She was sleeping because she was bored. Not because she was tired. How had she come to this? All of this madness?

The pink-haired girl collapsed to her knees, body-shaking with violent heaving which even she was unclear whether they were born of laughter or depression. She certainly wept, though, and her tears ignited fires where they fell, adding to the conflagration around her. She watched as her home burned in golden fire under a green sun, as the places of her childhood ignited and were consumed, and let the hysteria take her.

Warm arms embraced her, smothered her, enveloped her, and the girl turned to sob into a red-robed chest. She clung back as if she was drowning, clung to the softness of Cattleya's front, and let out the emotions she would not dream of showing when she was awake.

Only, when she looked through bleary eyes, it was not Cattleya she was snuggled up against. Dark eyes stared down at her from a lilac-skinned visage, and the neomah – an emotion Louise could not quite read on her face – smiled, showing brazen teeth.

"There, there," Marisalon said gently, cradling her against her breast. "We'll be able to find a way to get out, my fair lady."

A fresh burst of tears erupted. It was just because this felt sort of like one of Cattleya's hugs, Louise told herself, even as she cried. It might have smelt wrong, strangely perfumed, but the softness and the way she hugged – not that Louise had much experience from that otherwise – was all too reminiscent. It wasn't like she liked Marisalon or anything, or that she could replace her sister's proper hugs. She was a perverted head-familiar who got away with acts of disgusting cheek because Louise couldn't punish her. The girl... the girl was just not going to punish her when she was doing the sort of thing she should normally be doing. That was all. It... it would set a bad example.

Louise sniffed as she pulled away, to wipe her eyes upon her own sleeve. It wasn't even like she had needed the hug oh so very badly, anyway. And… and this was just a dream. She knew that. She… was just feeling stressed and fragile, to react like that to the sight. It wasn't real.

"Oh dear," the neomah said. "It must be so very horrible for you to be bound like this." She stroked one warm hand against Louise's forehead, tickling her nose with the trailing cuff of her sleeve.

The girl swallowed hard, not trusting herself to speak for several long breaths. Eventually, she managed, "Wh-what are you wearing?" She swallowed again. "You normally dress in... in a perverted way."

The lilac-skinned woman smiled broadly, spreading her arms to let Louise see. It was a long garment which seemed to combine elements of a gown and a robe, and now that Louise looked closer she could see that it was made of layer upon layer of very fine fabric. Each individual one was translucent, but there were so many that summed together they made the neomah quite decent; certainly, decent by her standards.

"Do you like it?" Marisalon asked, almost coquettishly.

Louise stared. That was such a... such an out-of-place comment that it all-but left her unable to think. "It's... it's very red," she managed eventually.

"It is, rather," the neomah agreed. "But it was the very height of fashion on the Blessed Isle some two hundred-and-fifty years ago. Why, my mistress at the time – she was the one who first called me 'Marisalon' – she had me help her out of it on many occasions, and so I grew rather fond of this style. It's certainly not as confining as other dresses, and removing it gets progressively more enjoyable, my lady, as fewer and fewer layers remain."

"It d-doesn't go with your skin colour," the girl said, sniffing. She was trying very hard not to think about the casual mention of two hundred and fifty years. The way that the thing inside her head was almost old enough to have seen the Yellow Pox was... Lord and Founder... was terrifying in its own way. This creature, this thing that acted like a spoilt child and demanded grapes and was perverted in ways which she didn't even understand... it was old enough to have been alive in the mid three-hundrds.

The 'thing' was of course entirely ignorant of... wait, Marisalon was not aware of her train of thought when she dreamed like this? That in her dreams, the woman-creature was out of her head? Tear-blurred eyes opened wide in shock, and she thought several rather rude things, just as a pre-emptive test.

Any further thought which might have been put into things, however, was interrupted by the rippling wave of colour-change which passed through Marisalon's robe, leaving it a pale shade of blue. "Does that please you more, my fair lady?" the neomah asked.

Louise chose to ignore the slightly suggestive tone she thought she heard in those words, and nodded. "It... it looks better," she said, sitting up slightly, and drying her eyes on her sleeve – which, upon closer observation, was the wedding dress of Albion. A choked bubble of noise escaped from her mouth as she stared down at her family's burning estate, under a green sun. "I... I never thought I'd be happy to be having a n-nightmare," she said, in a small voice.

"It is horrible, fair princess," Marisalon agreed, leaning back on the hillside. "I did bring a picnic, in case you don't mind eating food imagined into being."

Louise's head snapped around, a hungry look in her eyes. "Food?" she all-but barked.

The neomah raised her hands apologetically. "Imaginary food, my lady, imaginary food. It's just a dream."

That proved to only be a small obstruction to Louise, who dived towards the basket with its assortment of... rather strange foodstuffs, the girl realised after she had guzzled down about half the contents.

"This? This is _wriggling!_" she said, slowly, in a horrified tone of voice, at the bowl of things that she had thought was rice.

Marisalon frowned, and leaned in closer, dark eyes staring at the contents of the bowl. "I'm afraid it shouldn't be doing that," she said, gravely. "This is a dream, after all."

"Oh." Louise sucked on her lip, feeling somewhat nauseated despite the wonderful feeling of fullness for the first time in days. "Do you... you want it?" she asked.

"Yes please," the lilac-skinned woman said, cheerfully, scooping out the squirming things which... which Louise was beginning to suspect were tiny leathery eggs, like the ones laid by snakes. "I tried to imagine up some chalcanth," Marisalon said with her mouth full, reaching for some hard yellowy-orange wafer-like things to scoop up more of the probably-eggs, "but I think this is basically your dream, so everything, my lady, is based off a reference from things you are familiar with. My attempts to imagine a nice eristrufa vintage – rather mild for you to begin with – well, it did not turn out well. It... just tasted a bit like salt. It had no proper kick at all! That meant that I had to be rather bland and plain and..." she swallowed, "... this is not meant as a criticism, my princess, but your world has a horribly limited range of herbs and spices! It was quite disgraceful! You don't even know what chocolate is! Or bloodtwist!"

"Choc-o-late?" Louise echoed, forcing her words around the strange syllables.

"Exactly!" Marisalon exclaimed, throwing her hands wide. "I can't even show it to you because I tried to make you some and you have no idea what it tastes like, and Red Moon and Green Sun know I wanted to, because you really needed cheering up!" The neomah paused. "My lady," she added, voice softer.

Louise stared down at her feet, pulling her legs up to hug her knees. She didn't want to say anything right now. "I'm fine," she muttered, trying to put a brave face to things. It was a lie, and she knew it had been silly to say it as soon as the words left her mouth. Someone who was fine would not have spent time sobbing into her head-familiar's still-wet front.

"You're not fine."

"I'm fine!" the girl snapped, staring up with reddened eyes and hugging her knees tighter.

"You're worrying me!" Marisalon all-but exploded. "You think I don't know how much this hurts you! Or rather, how much it hurts us, because I get the hunger pangs too, thank you very much. Louise! You're wearing yourself thin, and..." the neomah dabbed at her dark eyes, "... and you're only asleep right now because you all-but passed out from exhaustion! And then you keep on spending time fighting and practicing punching and running around in that horrible little cell, rather than saving your strength!" The woman's luscious lips were twisted up in an expression of misery. "I can't help you if you're going to do things like that!"

"I can't get out!" Louise yelled back. "I can't... I can't _do _anything. She shot me! She shot me and it still hurts and I couldn't break down the walls! So I can't get out, even if I try my hardest, and she... she can k-kill me! I _need _to get stronger! She took the Staff so I need to learn how to fight with my bare hands!" She squared her jaw, and glared at the neomah. "So if you're not going to help me..."

"Oh, stop being a bloody erymanthus!" Marisalon snapped. Her eyes widened, as if she had not quite meant to say that, but then she squared her jaw.

The slap which knocked her to the ground had rather more in common with a punch. "What did you call me!" Louise roared, a sound which went beyond the physical and tore the very fabric of the dream. The sun split asunder and rained fire down upon the earth.

The neomah pulled herself to her feet, a livid weal taking up most of the left side of her face. "You heard me!" she retorted. "That's all you're being! You're not thinking, you're just jumping up and down hooting because no one is letting you suck the marrow out of bones!" Brass teeth bared, she hissed, "There are ways of solving problems other than by killing them! My oh-so-fair lady."

"Oh, yes, of course! Yes, yes," Louise said, the fire from the skies igniting her dress. She ignored it, as she stood face to face with her head-familiar, screaming at each other. "That's what you'll want me to do! You'll... you'll want me to act in a... a slovenly way and try to... to s-seduce that Sheffield-bitch! Just to get out!"

"I would if I thought it would work! I'm thinking of your best interests! Unlike you, apparently!"

"How dare you! How _dare _you!"

"I'll dare all I please! I'm only in your dreams because I want to be!" the neomah hissed. "I can just leave any time I want to! But no, actually! I was going to give you advice on how to handle and manipulate people, because for all you like to brag about your schooling you are totally and utterly terrible at it! Worse than a newborn! And let me tell you this; you are _entirely _inadequate by Dynastic standards. You rely on shouting, orders, and being a pretty face and clearly they only work on people who don't know you well!"

The second slap send the neomah sprawling again. "I don't want your advice!" Louise yelled, eyes welling up with tears. She was not a failure! She wasn't!

"You are going to _take _my advice," the bald woman hissed from between clenched teeth, clutching her cheek as she clambered back up. "Because I never asked to be jammed into your head. I had a pretty good thing going. Now if you die, I die, so, my lady, we are hopefully going to be stuck together for a very long time, because alternative is both of us dying and I don't want that! Unlike you, it seems!"

"I don't want to die! You _stupid _purple whore! In case you're so stupid you've forgotten, she's drugging the food! Who knows what she wants? I'm doing what I can when I haven't eaten properly in days!"

"Then why are you exhausting yourself and not listening to my hints that you should try to get more food out of the guards who bring the normal meals!" Marisalon screamed in her face, face underlit by flames. "We looked through the slot, and they're just men! Humans are weak and stupid and pathetic and they should be clay in your hands, even _before _you bring in the power of the Yozis! Crush them! Bend them to your will!"

"I can't reach them! What am I meant to do, punch them through the slot!"

"And that's why you're just being a bloody erymanthus! Kill, kill, kill! Maim, maim, maim! Why aren't you trying to control them! To make them love you!"

"Magic can't control minds like that! Well, the ones which can are banned by the Church! Even if I could do that kind of thing, it would be heresy!"

"You're not a mage!" the neomah yelled. "And you said you wanted out! If you're lucky, then they'll have a key and as soon as they open the door to try to fall for your..." Marisalon's glance dipped to Louise's chest, and she snorted, "... _bountiful _charms, _then_ the maiming and the violence and the killing can happen! But as long as we're stuck in here we're at her mercy, so you should be prepared to do _anything _if it'll get us out of the cell because then we can do something else!"

Louise paused, taking a deep breath and holding it, her face turning the same shade as her hair. "Why didn't you say that earlier!" she yelled.

"I did! I did! I told you to use your feminine wiles on the guards who bring the food to see if you could invite them in! Several times! You're just so hard-headed and stubborn I see I need to outright state anything like that!"

"I thought you were talking about doing things that would d-d-dishonour my husband and my family! Not something that would let me ambush them!"

"What else were you going to do, lie on your back for all of them when they opened the door and let them use you one at a time? Of course I was talking about a murderous rampage!"

Both figures sagged back, panting. Louise took several long and slow breaths, and slowly the firestorm that surrounded them evaporated, the burning mist recoalescing into the sun above. She barely noticed the charred remnants of the dress fall off her, nor the creeping of her own shadow up over her body, scorched blackness concealed by a deeper darkness, nor even the dimming of the sky.

"I'm not expecting you to seduce that Sheffield creature," Marisalon said slowly, clearly trying to control her tone of voice. "Yes, she's attractive in that delightful exotic way, but I strongly doubt it would work. That's the only reason I don't think you should even try. Which is a shame, because if it did work... well, the removal of clothes would also leave her without a weapon." The neomah's clothing was entirely unburned, but it was stained with sweat. "But the guards who bring the food are just men. Well, men and women. You know when it's Sheffield, because that's when her spirits show up. Gem-hot-bitter, salty-sharp-woman, and sweet-purple-sour always show up right when she does."

"I know, I know, I..." the girl trailed off. "I know." She slumped down, sprawling on the charred remnants of the blanket, running her hands across her shadow-covered front where she had been shot. All the anger seemed to have fled her, leaving only the misery which had earlier devoured her. "I want to go home," she said, in a small voice. "I want Viscount Wardes to rescue me. I don't want to be hungry or hurt or trapped in here."

Above her, the sun died, leaving only blackness in the sky. The sole light was cast by the fires that littered the landscape, casting green and purple and blue lights across the wastes. The pyres flickered and hissed flickered in the biting-cold wind, which howled like mad beasts.

"But he's dead," she said, squaring her jaw. "And if I am going to get out of here, I am going to have to do it myself. Which means I need to do whatever I need to." She exhaled, blue-tinted condensation forming. "I can always do penance afterwards, if I am forced to sin against a monster-like creature. Mother will understand, and Princess Henrietta will be _pleased _if I can extract revenge upon the people who plan to kill her beloved.."

There was a dark, liquid chuckle, which came from all around her. "yes, it makes perfect sense, though it would be better for us to escape, so revenge comes second to freedom," her shadow said. "we're doing well. do whatever it takes. _whatever _it takes."

"Yes," Louise hissed.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Holy Republic of Albion rose early. It was a habit he had acquired in his youth, before he had joined the church – leaving his younger sister to inherit his mother's estate – and it had served him well. So many hours went to waste in the day, and one thought more clearly at such times.

Lord Fairfax was somewhat less pleased at the Lord Protector's tendency to schedule meetings at ungodly hours of the morning, but refrained from commenting. He had asked to see the man at the first convenient moment, after all, and so he was to blame for not being more precise with his phrasing. Boots squelching slightly from an ill-placed puddle, he greeted Cromwell, and took the proffered seat.

"This is about New Castle, is it not?" Cromwell asked, taking an idle bite from a freshly baked bread roll. He gestured to the bowl he had taken it from, indicating that the general should feel free. "Is there something wrong?"

The dark-haired man winced, and stroked his beard. "There may be," he said, bluntly. "I certainly felt there was enough of a risk to speak to you in person, for I would keep this between me and you. Wind-carried messages have arrived, telling me that no fewer than forty men have died – no, let me be blunt! Have been murdered! No fewer than forty murdered since we took the castle."

Cromwell turned pale, shaking his head. "By what?"

Lord Fairfax made a disgusted noise. "Blades and wind magic alike. No small magics, either; the mage or mages behind this are at least line-rank wind mages. And..." his voice dropped, "... Oliver, from what both the prisoners and Stumper told us, Jean-Jacques de Wardes was present. Just as your orders had it. But we have still found no corpse."

"Would not... he kill more people than a mere forty?" Cromwell asked, uneasily.

"That is why it is merely suspicion," the general who had taken New Castle said bluntly. "Line-rank magic is not enough to pin it on him, though the killings and the way they target mages and officers... yes, the killer is trained. But..." he spread his hands, "... other nobles loyal to the Founder-damned royalists are trained too." He coughed. "I know you said to take him alive, just like that pink-haired brat, but..." he sighed, "I cannot say. Stumper said he would be very easy to sway to our side if we could but get proof of the rumoured affair of the Tristainian princess, for he is loyal to Tristain rather than their crown princess, but I cannot even hope to take him alive if I cannot find him."

"I know old friend, I know." Inwardly, the Lord Protector sneered at the name of Stumper. He was one of their contacts and allies in Tristain, and a thoroughly detestable little man. Oh, certainly, he used that ridiculous pseudonym, but their agents had been able to find out that he was in truth Pierre Gellon, the bastard son of a Tristainian noble, who was a minor and entirely forgettable minor functionary in the palace bureaucracy. Fortune had clearly ill-favoured him, because he was the very image of a craven, whining bastard, but his information had not once proven wrong.

"And what of the... the other matter Stumper raised?" Lord Fairfax continued, pressing the question.

"Nothing yet," Cromwell said, honestly. "Lady Sheffield is handling matters."

The dark-haired man looked uncomfortable. "I have no great fondness of her as a woman, even though she is useful," he said awkwardly, playing with the bread roll in his hands. "And the plans for the Princess Hibernia... I cannot say they leave me entirely quietened. The Prince Wales is an arrogant fool, and I have seen what he did to captured so-called traitors – I will shed no tears for him. But this trial... it simply does not feel right to try a nine-year old girl who spends half the time crying and the other half looking confused about exactly why she is in the dock for the many and unjust sins of her father and brother."

"It is necessary for the cause of the Holy Republic."

"Necessary it may be," the general said, standing, "but I am sure I am not alone in such unease. Look around the courtroom, Oliver; people can see that a distressed small child who cannot really be held guilty for the accusations has a warden-proctor who is cooperating with the adpursant to lead the trial to a guilty verdict. We cannot be seen to be tyrants like that monster Jacomus." He made a disgusted noise. "Lord and Founder, you could have led the prime judge to have her fail to plead, find her guilty, and then show mercy! 'Twould have been a better break with the past than this!"

Oliver Cromwell rose, pushing back his dirty blond hair. "It has to be done, to safeguard us against unwarranted aggression by Tristain and others," he snapped. "You know this! You certainly do! We cannot leave a branch of the royal family around who has not been made safe. Yes, she is nine now, and pathetic! In ten years time, she will be a banner for anyone who hates us to rally around! Would you casually wave a torch around a barrel of gunpowder? If not, do not try to tell me how to stop this particular petard going off in a decade!"

Lord Fairfax took a deep breath. "For God's sake, I know!" he retorted. "This whole charade merely seems cruel and as the Founder Brimir said, show mercy and the Lord God smiles on you."

"He also said 'Pay each man in kind with what he is owed; pay love with love, apathy with carelessness, and misery with spite'," the priest said, looking away from the dark-haired man to dig through his papers. "Our cause is righteous, and sins are carried through the blood just as the blessing of magic is."

The tense silence in the room quietly simmered.

"Here are the wind-sent documents on the killings," Lord Fairfax said, after a while. Drawing a sealed envelope out from under his coat, he laid it on the table. "You may want to look over it yourself; I have requested more men to help protect the engineers as they look towards rebuilding New Castle to help us hold the area."

Oliver Cromwell made a grunt of agreement, hands already going to break the wax seal. "See yourself out," he said, eyes flicking over the stiff papers.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Weary and pale-faced, Louise lay slumped on her bed. Slowly she took a bite of stale rye bread, and forced herself to chew. The food clung to her throat, and she forced herself to swallow, before stashing the lump of dark bread back under her bed. She would let that go down, wait at least an hour and see how she felt before she would risk any more. That small bite already had her feeling slightly tipsy – she suspected that the Sheffield-woman was upping the amount of alchemical substances she was concealing in the food, the better to ensnare her.

She was nervous, tired and exhausted, but there was something in her there had not been before. A certainty, a surety, a guarantee to herself that she would be free of this place. The worry and uncertainty was gone, washed away in her dreams.

"_Fair lady,_" Marisalon said, her voice sounding as mentally exhausted as the girl felt, "_I realise I should clarify something._"

The girl sighed. 'Oh?' she thought.

"_An erymanthus? It is another kind of kin-spawn. They descend from the King and Unquestionable Ligier too, though their direct progenitor is She-Who-Stands-In-Doorways, rather than the Weaver of Voices_."

'Oh.' She had been wondering about that, she had to admit. 'I thought it was some kind of insult. Meaning idiot or something.'

"_Oh, no no no,_" Marisalon hastily reassured her. "_The progenitors of our races merely represent entirely different aspects of Unquestionable Ligier. Hence, they are violent, and we are not. As I have said many times before, violence does not come naturally to us of the neomah, while the erymanthoi have it as their first, last, and preferred resort._"

'I see.' Louise shifted on the bed, moving carefully so she could see out the window to the pre-dawn light, and stretched out to her full length on the bed. The pain in her abdomen was mostly gone, though the cramps from the drugged food and the hunger pangs were still in full force. It was raining outside, from clouds a scant few hundred metres above the land, and... Lord and Founder, she wanted to be outside. Who thought you could learn to miss being rained on so much?

The neomah mentally cleared her throat. "_Louise,_" she said, "_do not fall into melancholy once more. Have you put more thought into the approaches you can use on the guard who brings breakfast?_"

The girl sighed out loud, running her hand through her hair. 'I have, actually,' she thought. 'I... I don't speak Albionese. And I doubt the peasants likely to be working as guards here will speak Tristainian and they probably won't even speak Brimiric... not enough to be able to do more than say prayers, certainly.'

"_Oh._" The waves of disappointment coming from Marisalon's mental presence were crushing. "_My lady... I am so sorry. That completely slipped my mind._"

Louise grinned, the first smile in what felt like a very long time. 'Oh, if only I wasn't so crude and violent and like an erymandus...'

"_... erymanthus._"

'Yes, that. If I was not so crude and violent, I'd have thought about that. And realised that although I can't _speak _Albionese, I _can _read it. And thus write it. And therefore if I can pass a message through the door, on the food tray...' she trailed off. 'Well, it's better than trying to talk loudly and slowly at some inbred commoner.'

There was silence from the neomah. "_Will they be able to read?" _Marisalon asked.

'They certainly should be able to! Not necessarily that well,' Louise admitted, 'but the Church is very much in favour of teaching even the lowest of the peasantry enough to be able to reach those childishly written pamphlets they put out.' Slowly, she pulled herself to her feet, and made her way across the room to the small selection of books which she had been provided with. 'So, this paper should be fine for writing material, and ink...'

A search through the room turned up nothing.

"Drat," Louise said out loud. She really should have thought of this. If she hadn't destroyed the gravy which had come with lunch, she could have used it as ink. Empty-handed, she stared around. And then she stared at her empty hands.

There was always her own blood.

That would hurt.

Was there another way?

Well, the character Octavia from the eponymous tragic romance had sent a secret message to her fiancé written in her own blood, hadn't she? And it would certainly dry properly; she knew the staining capacity of her own blood from all the accidental cuts she had inflicted on herself from her nails. Of course, her skin had strangely toughened since then, but she would be able to write something like that in her own blood. And the knife she used to cut her food could both be used to open a wound and also as a stylus.

"_Do we have to do it this way?_" Marisalon asked uneasily. "_Can't you just wait until they bring a meal which could be used to write in?_"

'No,' Louise thought, shaking her head, already preparing for the pain. Unbuttoning her dress, she checked the scar on her abdomen. No, that was sealed up, and she had experienced how uncomfortable that injury was. She had no desire to prolong the healing any more. 'I don't know how long this is going to take, and if she is upping the dose in the food, I'll either get too weak or end up affected by some potion. If it is to be done, it is better to be done now.'

Swiftly, she folded a page of a book which had blank space in it, and tore it out cleanly. Could she give herself a nosebleed? That would be awfully convenient, because nosebleeds made a manageable amount of blood and also wouldn't leave any scars. Otherwise, if she couldn't... she wouldn't want to be cut anywhere too obvious, or where it would hurt her if she had to fight people.

"_Fair lady! Can you at least compose the message before you start thinking about bleeding yourself?_" Marisalon pleaded. "_And maybe practice writing in water before you start using blood?_"

... that was probably a good idea, Louise considered.

* * *

{0}

* * *

A single voice, raised in song, echoed through the halls and corridors of the Pale Tower. Where on other days there had been a rage-filled bellow or a nerve-sawing scream, today there was a pure song. The Brimiric hymn of grace and beauty without malice crept under the doors and wormed past walls, until the prison was filled with liturgical melody.

"Glory to you who gave us the Void," Louise sang. "Glory to you in highest places, let all men give praise to you! We praise you, we bless you, we worship you, we glorify you, we give thanks to you for your great glory. Lord, King of the heavens, Righteousness, almighty; Source of Founder, Holy Patron, who revealed Your will to Brimir!

Louise was beaming as she sang out. She... she actually did feel better. While singing. Praying. Like this. She had been spending too long focussed on hatred in the past few days, and had forgotten faith.

"Founder, Brimir, unjustly murdered, share your gift of mercy! Have mercy on us, you who bought mercy and freedom for all men. Receive our prayer, you who freed us from slavery , and have mercy on us. For freed from mortal remains you ascended to the Lord. Founder Brimir, to the glory of God the Saviour. Blessing be!"

And yet there was the cold, dark bit of her which reminded her that such a beautiful, innocent song would shame these Albionse traitors into remembering the oaths they had once sworn. That the sound of this ancient hymn would remind them how by acting like this, they were like the elves who had once enslaved mankind.

"Each day we bless you, and we praise your name forever and to the ages of ages!"

And Lord and Founder, she had timed it perfectly, for scant seconds after she had finished she heard the grinding rattle of the slot at the bottom of the door being cranked up. That almost certainly meant that the onlooker had been listening to her, not wanting to interrupt her song.

Carefully, gently, Louise unfolded from where she had been sitting on the floor, wrapping herself in an invisible air of noble grace and authority. While her back was turned, she pinched her cheeks, to redden them slightly. From her bed, she picked up the tray she had to return, with the blood-written note on it. Deliberately she advanced to the door, holding the tray, staring at the tiny window of clear material as hard as steel and the wide-open eyes she could see through it.

"I return my tray to you," she announced imperiously in Romalian – the language she most-hoped the guard on the other side might have a cursory priest-taught knowledge of – stooping to put it down in range of the open slot at the floor. She gave a slight curtseying dip, the kind which a superior might honour a useful inferior with. "Honour this request; as a de la Vallière, I will be thankful and gracious if you do so."

With a toe, she nudged the tray with the note on it through the door. "Thank you," she added in what she thought was correct Albionese, speaking loudly and slowly in case the peasant misunderstood her. Either way, the tray with her breakfast in it arrived, and she smiled broadly through the window. "Thank you," she tried again, bending down to pick up the new tray and briefly cursing that she did not really have cleavage to expose – though of course that would be completely improper behaviour.

Carefully, decorously, she made her way back to her bed, and laying the tray down, began to sing again, a hymn to the morning and the rising sun. By the end of it, her forehead was gleaming in brazen and viridian, and the guard was gone from the window.

Louise let out a long slow breath. "It's nice to be able to sing properly and breathe deeply without my stomach screaming in pain," she said out loud, for the sake of any watchers, even as her hands went to sorting through the food for what she would keep and what she would destroy.

Maybe... hmm, if she could find a way to heat some of the food without destroying it, she might be able to denature some of the reagents without risking her health, which would allow her to eat more even if the message did not work. See! This was the power of faith! She was thinking more clearly! She had her priorities in order! All she would need to do would be escape first, and _then _she could enforce righteous punishment on that Sheffield-woman!

'How did you think that went, Marisalon?' she asked, mentally, as in her hands cold meat burned in green fire.

There was an uncertain noise from the neomah. "_It all depends on what orders they have, my lady,_" she said. "_If they know enough to fear one such as you, they will forbid all contact and he will not read the note. But... ah,_" there was a throaty chuckle, "_you are a pretty girl who sings beautifully. If he reads it... why, a request that he obtain more food for you, making sure it is not poisoned, in accordance with the 'correct' and 'honourable' way to treat a noble prisoner – which they are not doing – well, that may work_."

Now all Louise could do was wait.

* * *

{0}

* * *

There was no song, and there were no smiles when Sheffield arrived in the late afternoon. The click of her boots against the smooth white stone of the floors was accompanied by the drips of rainwater running off her coat.

In some of the underground areas of the Pale Tower, whimpers sounded from within the cells at the all-so-characteristic sound of her approach. Others had no such noises, the prisoners within mute. In some cases, that was because of shear, abject terror. In others, it was because they could not scream out or vocalise the slightest noise. And in a few, it was simple that they did not fear her anymore.

But Sheffield was not headed to the underground areas, the places which had once been the royal torture chambers before she repurposed them for higher goals. No, she had merely to leave a few things down there, and acquire rather more for her personal defence should the spirit-get de la Vallière prove troublesome, and then she was up again, up oxen-drawn lifts and around spiralling staircases in the depths of the Pale Tower. Up into the 'public' places, where the individuals others knew she had were kept.

She whistled three times, and three of her bound spirits unfolded from the rune-marked clay pots she had picked up when in the depths of the tower. A series of short commands to them, and they were squirming through the least crack under the door. She was not prepared to open the hatch, for fear that the spirit-get might devise a way to – she shifted in remembered agony – burn her again.

The pink-haired brat was kneeling on the floor of her cell, her eyes closed, when Sheffield arrived. Resting this time, rather than engaging in violence. Perhaps the drugs in her food were having a cumulative effect. Perhaps she merely was – rightly – suffering from her self-restricted food intake. Either way, it was pleasing to the dark-clad woman.

Sheffield evaluated the kneeling figure. Thinner, yes, thinner than she had been when she had been confined here. Much cleaner than she should have been; perhaps she was using the water to wash rather than drink, but the girl appeared to neither sweat nor require the unused chamberpot. Clothes; torn and dishevelled. The girl was not suffering as she should be, probably due to the unnatural cleanliness, so the woman would not be able to extract concessions from her with the promise of a bath.

And the wound she had been forced to inflict upon her seemed much healed even over how it had been upon the last inspection. Sheffield wrinkled her nose. Only a few spirit-get healed at that sort of rate – discounting of course those whose magics aided in recovery, for the scion of the de la Vallières did not appear to be one of them – and this was a mixed blessing. She would rather the girl be weak and pliable from the injury. Still, at least she was not dead.

That would have been inconvenient. It would close down future options.

"I know you are there, Madam Sheffield," the girl said, without opening an eye. She exhaled, a low hissing breath. "You reek. Even through the sealed door."

"I make the same offer to you I have previously," the dark-haired woman said, after a moment's pause. "You will tell me of the letter you were carrying. You will tell me of the message you had to bring to the Prince Cearl."

"No." The words were flat, and spoken with certainty, just as the pink-haired brat had refused before. Unusually, though, she continued. "I can't tell you. I don't know. I destroyed the letters rather than risk them falling into traitors' hands, and they were sealed with magic which would have destroyed them had I peeked." Another exhalation. "I cannot tell you what the letters were, because I do not know."

There was a certain, horrible dark certainty in those words. She had claimed not to know before, of course, but this time it was much more... certain. Had she broken?

No. The older woman tilted her head. The brat was neither human nor mage, and so was not to be trusted. Her parent – or benefactor – was not yet known.

It was a shame that Louise de la Vallière was so very dangerous. If she had been less capable, if she had been but a normal mage who could have been disarmed by taking away her wand, then it would have been simple to send someone in to be nice to her. As it stood, it would be necessary to break her.

If this went on much longer, more extreme methods would have to be used, but all of them required her to be weaker and unable to resist the necessary actions. Still, useful reagents were being prepared by alchemists under her service. This charade would come to an end one way or another.

"I will not deal with someone such as _you _who follows none of the proper methods for dealing with a noble prisoner," the girl in the room added, her voice oddly low and sinister. "Madame Sheffield, you are a dishonourable cur who follows none of the laws of war or faith for a captured prisoner."

Sheffield leaned in, towards the tiny window in the door. "You are not to be trusted, spirit-get," she said. "I will not let you attempt to kill someone who does not know of your danger."

The girl looked up for the first time, reddish-pink eyes locked on the tiny window. "On my honour as a noble and the daughter of the de la Vallière family, I will not attempt to kill an individual bought to talk to me who will try to follow the _honourable _methods of conduct," the girl said, glaring.

"Honour?" Sheffield smirked. "Perhaps the same honour possessed by the mother who let you think you were her legitimate daughter? I think not."

The girl did not respond, her eyes closed once more and her hands resting on her lap. She responded to no more of the questions and statements from Sheffield, and in time the woman left.

Yes. Other methods might soon be required.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"No! I won't! That's wrong!"

"Be reasonable, your highness," the man said gently, resting his hands on the leather-topped table in the white-walled cell of the Princess Hibernia. The deep violet robe of the warden-proctor was smoothed down and sleek, painting him in stark contrast to the simply-dressed princess. "I am on your side here, trying to keep me safe. You want that, don't you?"

Lips wobbling, Princess Sophia made a small noise of agreement. The redness in her face after the outburst began to fade, leaving her the same shade of sheet-pale she had spent this day in court. Her legs and arms, bruised from the restraints which they fitted with her every day, were shaking. Sometimes she would notice this, and force them to stillness, but as soon as her attention wavered the cramps and muscle pains set them a-shivering again.

"Yes, well, you do need to give me something to work with here," the warden-proctor said reasonably. "It is my job, on my honour, to do my best to keep you personally safe and stop them from punishing you. You are young, after all, and I am certain... certain, I tell you... that with just a few concessions from you, a few small agreements, you will be able to avoid any kind of serious punishment. That's all it will take. And then you'll be safe... in fact, it might, if you cooperate fully, be possible for you to keep your title as Duchess of Eidyn. A few minor restrictions, a responsible woman to be your guardian until you have reached the age of majority, and you might even be able to take up a seat in the Desbattion one day." Reaching out with one hand, he stilled the shaking movement of her arms. "I'm here to help you," he said, with the firm honest friendly stare of an honest man.

"But..." the little girl said softly. "But...Daddy he... I'm meant to act like a princess. And... I..." She trailed off, her eyes flicking from left to right in confusion. "I haven't done anything wrong," she whispered. "And... when they make me sit in the uncomfortable chair, I can't move or anything. And... and what about Cearl? I want to see my brother!"

"I'm sure, if you agree to these little things, and so does he, that they'll be lenient with him," the warden-proctor said reassuringly. "But some of these things are very important, and they're keeping the whole country safe. Do you know how many wars the Emperor of Germania has started since he took the throne? Lots and lots and lots."

He let go of her hands, and stood, clearing his throat. "Your highness, please think about these matters. A lot of people's lives, including your own, rest on your choice here. I'm trying my hardest... my outright hardest... to get them to be as lenient as possible with you, because of your youth, and..." he lowered his voice, "... even if your father may have done some bad things from time to time, we both know you're a little girl who can't have been behind any of the things that they accuse you of."

"Then why do... why... they..." the Princess Hibernia managed, nose running. "Why do they blame me?"

"Oh, it's all due to very complicated legal reasons. But as I explained to you, there's a way you can trick them out of it. I talked them into making you this offer, and if you accept it, the adpursant will look very silly in front of everyone and I might even be able to persuade her to be forced to apologise to you for making you sit in that uncomfortable chair and the way you've been treated."

"Really?" Sophia asked.

"Really," the man said, with an earnest nod. "Trust me on this. But you have to agree to it before the trial ends, because otherwise they'll have a guilty verdict and this cunning trick the two of us will be able to play on them won't work. Now," he said, running a finger over the table top, "now I don't expect you to agree to it now, because it's very important, and you need to put lots of thought into it.

"But that is something you'll need to put thought into, please. Because in one way, they'll execute you like a criminal. They'll hang you, by putting a rope around your neck, and did you know? If they don't do it right, you slowly choke to death, like someone's strangling you, which can take minutes and is very, very painful. And the other way, you'll be able to be a duchess and live in a castle and get married and have children and live a long and happy life."

Turning around, he looked back at the little girl, who was staring down at her feet, silently crying.

"Please think about it overnight," he said, his voice calm. "It is the best chance you have. I have given my very best in the name of your safety and your cause, and there is no one else who can help you if you reject this last chance."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The rattle of the slot in the door indicated the arrival of the evening's meal, and Louise rose from her position seated on the floor. She brushed aside the silvery ash made of burned food in which she had been practicing the 'First Tongue' letters with the aid of Marisalon, erasing the symbols.

Silently, she whispered a prayer of thanks to the Lord and Malfeas alike. Quite apart from the normal meal, there was an entirely out-of-place rough-hewn wooden bowl, filled with stew, and decidedly soggy bread floating on top. And next to it was a note, crudely scrawled with the inexpert handwriting of a commoner who was not overly familiar with the written word.

'My lady,' Louise read, tracing the words with her fingers. 'I got you ſtew from the guards place. You ſeemed ſo ſette in there. You are very preti. Bevalen do not let people know I did this thing.'

Carefully, she slid the note of gratitude she had written in lunchtime gravy under the door, the rigidly formal smile that an unmarried maiden should wear when receiving a gift from a man who was courting her on her face. It was false, of course, for none of those conditions were true, but all she needed was for the peasant to believe it. "Thank you," she said, and blushing – and that much was real – she blew him a kiss.

How shameful! How disgusting to have to act in such a manner! But if she was ill-skilled with men compared to – say, that trollop Kirche von Zerbst – then she could at least apply that natural shyness to her personal aid.

Her lips tingled, and her stomach ached, but she was not going to get caught if this was a trap. She would just allow herself a small amount at first.

Even if it meant it would be cold.

Her stomach growled.

She really wanted a hot meal. A proper one.

She should just eat it right now.

No. Carefully, Louise took one of the plates, emptied it, and allowed herself a spoonful of stew. Then she put the plate over the top, to stop it cooling down, and sat to wait to see if there were any ill-effects while she worked on her calligraphy.

And when she had decided it was safe, this was the best meal the third daughter of the de la Vallières could recall in all her sixteen years.

"_You will need to see if you can persuade him to bring more paper and ink,_" Marisalon said wickedly, "_because you appear to have this poor boy wound around your fingers. And this writing thing has... real potential._"

Outside, the sun set, and darkness consumed the floating isle of Albion.

* * *

{0}


	17. 16: An Act of Usurpation

******A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 16: An Act of Usurpation**

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was swelteringly hot in the kitchens. The magics of the Pale Tower gave heat without need for wood or coal, and the wide-open bread ovens wafted their scent of fresh loafs through the room. Despite the warmth, though, Matt Fitzgerald could not help but feel a sudden chill down the back of his neck as he thought – really thought – about what he was doing.

He was mad. Really. Giving food to one of the prisoners was the sort of thing which would get him in so much trouble that... he wasn't sure how much trouble that would entail. Nor did he want to know. Prisoners were only to be fed with their designated meals. That was in the rules.

But... she was so pretty, he thought, stepping around a cook shouting at someone else on the other side of the room. Pretty in a slightly foreign, tattered, noble way, and that accent. His Romalian was poor; it had been the working of the village priest who liked to tutor some of his brighter pupils who might consider a vocation in the clergy. But while Father Smith had sounded much the same no matter what he spoke – the old boy had been fond of a drink or three – the way those exotic syllables dripped off that girl's tongue made her words sound like a love poem.

Well, what he thought a love poem sounded like. Matt wasn't precisely sure what that was, given a certain inexperience in that field.

He... he just wanted to hug her and keep her safe. From everything. From the world. She was clearly far above the likes of him, a noble from far-off lands – the kind you only saw when Albion's course drifted over the lands below where they breathed thick air, but she had talked to him. She had said she would be 'very grateful' to him. And although her looks were gratitude enough – Founder, what if she smiled at him? – what about the fact that she was a noble, huh? Nobles were rich. And she was foreign, so no doubt she would be ransomed out at some point, and ol' Father Smith had said it did you good to get your feet under the table with the nobility.

But that rationalisation was only occupying a small part of his mind, compared to the part which was busy thinking about that beautiful face and the hints of flesh exposed by her torn, blood-stained dress.

He couldn't wait to talk to her again. Or... wait, no. No, if... yes, if he found someone who could help him with the writing, maybe he could write her some... like, some love poetry or something! Someone outside the jail, on his day off, who wouldn't report him or anything and who could help him read that lovely-written note from her again, but better than he could on his own. Maybe even someone who could write in Tristainian, bunch of clog-wearing babbler-talk that it was.

And of course, as a loyal guard of the New Model Army, he was... yeah, he was only paying closer attention to her so she wouldn't escape or nothing. Not that she was a real escape risk, because she didn't have a wand and she was all small and fragile. That warning about how she was dangerous was just clearly an exaggeration, because how could someone so beautiful and feminine be a threat? Now, clearly, she might be trying to use foreign wiles on him, and that meant he'd have to be very watchful for that, and the only way to tell if she was using wiles was by talking with her, right? So he was actually protecting other people by being all watchful close to her. Yeah.

Satisfied by his immaculate logic, Matt went looking for that kitchen maid he was sure had a thing for him and was always good for an extra portion.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Sheffield was at the cell once more, her pale face passing in and out of sight through the door. There were more spirits in the place too, this time; six at least.

"I have been reasonable so far," Sheffield said, in her dead voice. "I can continue to be reasonable, if you cooperate."

Louise sat there, hands folded on her lap. She took a deep breath. To be lectured by this _thing _was intolerable, but she could not simply punch her through the transparent glass-like plane of the door. She would not retaliate. Time was now on her side.

Surely.

"Or else, I could do this," the dark-haired woman on the other side of the door said. All of a sudden, the window _changed_, becoming no different from the other walls. "Natural light was a privilege of yours. It has now been withdrawn. More privileges will be withdrawn, until you plead for relief and tell me what I wish to know."

Louise said nothing, and took another deep breath, holding it in. She was feeling much stronger; she had three days of at least one proper meal. She would stay strong. She could do that now. She would not let the weakness of her flesh overcome her will, her loyalty to her parents and to Princess Henrietta.

"Still you are the difficult one." Sheffield snapped her fingers, and the lights in the room fell to a dim gloom. "So be it. I will return and maybe you will be more cooperative."

The clicking of her heels receded, and the strange synesthetic forms of her unseen spirits left with her, flowing out through the door's slot. Louise de la Vallière was left alone in the gloom.

"_Well, I'm surprised it took her this long,_" Marisalon drawled in her skull. "_Be aware, my princess, that she is likely to begin playing with the light levels at odd times of night._" The neomah hummed to herself. "_This would be awfully inconvenient if we actually had to sleep, no?_"

'I suspect it would,' Louise thought grimly, staring around the cell. There was no sign of a spirit in here, and that meant that she could get back to work on her next letter. A small smile crept onto her lips as she thought about how this terrible treatment of a noble prisoner could be portrayed.

Carefully, she withdrew the small packet of dried ink she had induced the guard to fetch for her from its hiding place in her pillow. A carefully measured amount, added to drinking water, was all she needed to ready it. From inside one of the books, she withdrew a torn out page and from underneath her bed she recovered a stylus. She checked the list of names she had obtained.

"_That little fool of a guard had promised to take this one to the chaplain here, yes?_" Marisalon asked. "_Well, I will leave this up to you. I am sure you know better than I how to appeal to one of the priests of your religion._"

As Louise de la Vallière carefully looped out each flowing letter, the characters sublimated into colourless light, vanishing from the eye entirely. There was no room for smiles in her concentration, but as she wrote her message there was an expression of grim satisfaction. A priest would speak Romalian, and that meant that she could be a little more verbose and appeal to scripture. And when the confessor themselves doubted their cause... well.

Her stylus scratched on the page, and light flared in the gloom, illuminating her face from below.

* * *

{0}

* * *

A wave of ill-ease was sweeping through the guards of the Pale Tower. By and large, the men and women who worked here were not deep thinkers. They were loyal to the Republic of Albion, naturally; the old torturers and gaolers who had served the now-dead king had been removed from their positions, one way or another.

But their job was to keep the prisoners in the less secure areas under control, to make sure the serving staff were not disturbed, and to protect the place from an attack from without. Their job was not to question what Lady Sheffield from the office of the Lord Protector did, and so they closed their ears to the screams and to the disappearances and the way that sometimes they would have to mop out a cell to remove a viscous mix of blood and oil from the floor.

They could not close their ears to the recent events. Ever since the prisoners from New Castle had been moved here, that was the key. There had been the screaming in the night, something which seemed to grate on the nerves and all to the ear. One could not simply ignore it; like the screams of a child it punched through whatever barriers one put up. And it was not screams of pain; no, they had heard plenty of them. It was something imprisoned but angry. Like a caged beast. Or monster.

It set the men on edge, when a good night's sleep was impossible. And the female guards suffered worse, for one of their barracks was close to the window where the screaming was coming from.

But that was not all. Now, recently, _notes _had started to appear. Left lying around the place, on scraps of paper and torn up pages, pushed under doors and left on beds; they held impassioned letters which begged – nay, commanded – attention.

And they said things about Lady Sheffield. That she consorted with spirits. That she came from the strange depths of the mystical East and that she had no faith in God and the Founder. That she was not human. That if she knew that they knew her secrets, she would treat them as she did the prisoners, so they must not speak of this to anyone.

And though the guards were not to question what the Lady Sheffield did nor to intrude on her affairs, they had all seen or heard or smelt enough to know that they did not want her attention. There was something terrifying about her. Something dead and cold and reptilian. Yes, some of them might have broken men's fingers or beaten women with knotted ropes on the orders of their superiors, but that was simple, honest violence. It was just a thing they did because they were told to. The noises from her special cells were more... exotic.

Yes. To a man, with those words hammered into their forebrains, they could well believe that the Lady Sheffield consorted with spirits. And that in itself, the heresy of Protestantism, was not something she would want getting out.

So they said nothing. But the tensions in the prison built and built. The stench of the fear of the guards soon began to rival those of the inmates.

And still, at irregular intervals, the noble prisoner in cell five screamed, her voice a whip against fraying nerves.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Cromwell's fingers clicked against the wood of his desk. Ta-ta-ta-tap. Ta-ta-ta-tap. The noise was the only thing that broke the silence of his office.

The blond man glowered at the smaller, rat-faced individual sat before him. His eyes flicked over the man's balding mousy hair, his too-large nose, his sallow, fish-clammy complexion and his twitching, greedy hands. Yes, Pierre Gellon, who called himself 'Stumper' was a truly odious little man. That face could have been straight out of a sheet mocking Tristainians. Still, from such allies they would forge greatness.

He merely wished that Stumper was not here, in his office, bringing with him a scent of tulips which tried to mask his sweat.

"You were meant to take her alive," the Tristainian man whined – and yes, it was most certainly a whine, in harsh, heavily accented Albionese. "Her and the Viscount de Wardes. I specifically told you that. It is a vital part of the plan to get the middle and high nobility on side with our part of the plan. If you can't work with us, it might well seem to us in Tristain who support the Reclamation that the entire business is just an Albionese jaunt and we're better off on our own. Maybe looking to Gallia, or even Germania."

Cromwell stilled his hand, and glared at the man. "You are the one who bought news of this attempted alliance to us in Albion," he said. "You and those you represent and those who are your natural allies are the ones who demand favours of us. You have no place to talk of such things."

The other man sniffed. On the few occasions they had met before, he had always seemed to have a cold then, too, and his snuffles were like a knife against the Lord Protector's nerves. "I don't think so. I'm a patriot, see, working for the greater good of Tristain. And that means I got to think of the greater good. So that's why I'm asking you again, and again, and why I had to talk my way onto a trading house mission to your wet island because you're not answering my messages honestly... do you have Louise de la Vallière captive? It's a vital part of the plan! How else can we turn the Viscount de Vajours – and the Griffin Knights with him?" Stumper made a disgusted noise. "Oh, don't tell me you killed him too!"

The priest repressed the urge to sigh, and rose from his seat, pacing out to stare over Londinium. It was a sunny day above the clouds today, but cold winds were blowing in from the Great North Sea, and a spiderweb pattern of frozen ice crystals stitched itself across his window. "The status of Viscount de Wardes is unknown at the moment," he admitted, choosing his words carefully. "We know he was present in New Castle, but he did not fight in its defence. No body has been found, so we assume that he may well be heading back to Tristain. As for the daughter of the de la Vallière family..." he paused. This was where things got complicated, because Sheffield has been clear that no one outside a small circle was to know that she had been captured. But damn it all, she would understand of the need to keep up their alliances.

"She is in custody," Cromwell said, bluntly. "She is being held captive until she is willing to testify about the message she was carrying. That is all."

"And you are treating her honestly and honourably?" the Tristainian man said. "I can't be too forceful about this; this is a de la Vallière. Founder help us all if word gets out that you have mistreated, shamed or... God forbid, she dies in your custody." Stumper gripped the table hard. "You might not understand how this is up in your wet island," he said, "but the family has influence and wealth similar to one of the grand duchies. More than Guldenhorf, even! If we alienate them, make an enemy of them, they'll bring all their debtors behind them, all their old allies behind them and the Reclamation in Tristain will be doomed. Dead in the water because of your damnable arrogance! Founder damn it, Cromwell, this is a matter of great importance! That you did not declare her captivity... that's a breach of the code of nobility, and you know it! She can basically make up anything that you've done to her and she'll be believed, because you're the ones who committed the first offence."

The Lord Protector did not turn to face the foreigner. "I know of no mistreatment," he said. That was the truth, but it was not honest. There was a reason everything had been handed over to Sheffield, after all. "And if it pleases you, you will not blaspheme in my presence, _Stumper_."

"And," the man continued, ignoring Cromwell and showing rather more backbone than he had ever ascribed to him, "if you even think of killing her to cover up mistreatment, things will be even worse! Her reputation is a known thing. You won't be able to pull the old 'killed while trying to escape' thing – this is a mage who is known to be unskilled. The truth will come out, and we'll all burn. And let me tell you this, Cromwell! I was not joking when I said we'd turn elsewhere. The Tristainian branch of the Reclamation is not your pawn. We're in deep, but not so deep that if you turn on us, we can't turn on you. We're risking a lot here! We expect you to hold up the end of your bargain!"

Cromwell longed to shut the nasal, whining little money-grubber up. Oh, how he longed to do so. But he could not, would not be ruled by such base emotions. No, he would think calmly and rationally. And once he had demolished the last remnants of the Albionese throne, then he would see to the problem of the de la Vallière girl.

"My friend," he said to Stumper, turning around again, "nothing would be further from the truth! I value and respect the risks you're taking. Please, sit down – I believe we both need a drink to calm our nerves."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Black boots clattered against the filth-streaked cobblestones of Londinium as, flanked by armoured guards, the woman who called herself Sheffield made her way to the Pale Tower. The city was drowned in clouds this evening, as Albion rose again through the sky, and the mists were painted a vile grey-yellow by the smokes and fumes in the air. In the drizzle, black speckles of smoke left tiny marrings on the woman's pale skin, though they and the drizzle-mist ran like quicksilver off her clothing to leave it spotless.

She was waved past the guards, and entered the grounds of the Tower itself. The feeling of power washed over her and she exhaled. Taking a towel from a servant to help dry off her face and hair – she had not chosen to take a carriage the short distance from the law courts – once again she stared around the interior of the entry chamber.

The waste. The ignorance of the 'Brimiric peoples' in how they treated what remained of the civilisations which had covered this continent before sorcerous invaders from the south with strange hair and eyes had swept their way north; raping, pillaging and conquering as they went.

Then she was headed into the guard room, to confer with the nominal commander of this fortress. Or as it practically was, to ensure the orders she had given to the man were being followed.

"She has seen no one?" she asked, tone clipped. "There has been no contact that has been permitted? The ones who deliver her food to her have been chosen such that they speak only Albionese and they deliver her food through the slot rather than being foolish enough to open the door?"

The man nodded. "Yes, m'lady," he said. The chief jailor was a scarred man, a veteran of Cromwell's campaigns, and she had recognised in him a useful lack of imagination and conformity to given orders. She did not want a smart nor a curious man for the things she got up to here, and in this gentleman, she had neither.

"You obey my orders as per her food?"

"Yes, m'lady. She does not eat it, though, and drinks almost nothing." The man's brows furrowed. "I cannot plainly see how she keeps up that exercise," he added. "She does not look like she has fat to spare." He stood there, waiting for her next question.

Of course, there was such a thing as too _little _initiative. "Is there anything else atypical or unusual she does?" she asked. "Anything you should be informing me of?"

The scarred man winced slightly. "Som'times she screams in the night," he all-but muttered, then repeated again, louder, when Sheffield asked him to repeat himself. "Sometimes in the day, too. It's not natural. It... it doesn't sound like it's coming from a slip of a girl like that. Not like the screams of the ones in the basement or your special rooms, my lady, neither."

"How does it sound?" the woman asked, her tone deadpan.

A muscle in the man's cheek twitched. "It's... like an animal. In pain or something, but angry 'cause of it. Like a bull in a ring, you know. It's scaring the men," he added, hastily. "I don't let them get sloppy, but it puts them on edge. There's muttering. An'… an' people know there's just a young girl in there, so… there's muttering," he repeated. "And, oh yes, she exercises greatly, but I did say that and it is only unusual for a lady."

Sheffield said nothing to that, but instead strode over to the man's desk, and dropped a sealed letters with fresh orders on the top of the unfinished paperwork which lay there. "I will go see the lady in the fifth cell," she said. "You will continue your work and not follow. The men who talk... have them all flogged, publicly. Make an example of them. You will give repeat offenders to me."

"Yes, m'lady."

The pink-haired prisoner in the fifth cell refused once again to cooperate. She did not speak to Sheffield, and ignored the dark-haired woman's orders to behave and cease screaming. She only spoke to insult her captor. Sheffield increased the light within the room to painfully bright, and commanded the Pale Tower to halve the size of the room.

She relished the look of shock on the spirit-get's face as stone grated against stone, the walls shedding their plaster layer as they slowly, glutinously flowed in.

And yet the spirit-get would not provide her with what she wanted to know.

So be it.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Pale, wan, Princess Sophia Stewart lay on her bed, and rubbed her bruised and stiff wrists. Her arms and legs were shaking uncontrollably. Even when she tried to compose herself, her muscles simply refused to respond. Every day they put her in those horribly uncomfortable chains for her arms and legs when she was in court, and every day the bruises hurt more and more, the weight and the rubbing adding to the pain.

On the third try, she managed to recover a used handkerchief from her pocket, and blotted at her eyes and nose. She was none too accurate with those gestures, but it made little difference because the cloth was so damp that she was doing little more than spreading the moisture around her face.

And it was cold in here. Maybe it was because of some wind coming from the Great North Sea, maybe it was just because they wanted her to suffer. Well, she was certainly suffering. She was tired and cold and they'd... they'd spent all day saying horrible things about her and her daddy and her brother in the court and being all serious and talking about the 'gravity of her offences' and... and if she looked at her wrists she could see the ugly red and purple banding of the fresh bruises which _hurt _and she was in here alone until next morning when they would just drag her out, put the shackles on again, and... and... and...

A fresh wave of tears overcame her, and she clung to herself, shaking like a leaf.

There was a bird on her window. On the outside, of course; nothing was alive in this cell apart from her. Not even a mouse. Still crying, she pulled herself to a sitting position, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "H-h-hello, little birdy," she said softly. It was one of the ravens of the Pale Tower, she could see; its eyes were the characteristic uncanny pale blue never seen normally among birds. "Is... is it cold out there for you too?"

The bird tilted its head at her. Through her blurred vision, she could see its breath in the air. Yes, it must be cold out there too.

"I don't know if you can h-hear me," she said, "but... if you c-could fly in, I'd g-give you some bread. You're m-meant to be lucky. And smart. R-Remember how I used to feed you?"

There was no response from the bird. The little girl tried rubbing her wrists again, and winced at the pain.

"If... if you can hear me, and... and understand me," she croaked. "Please. Please. Find someone who can help. Y-you're meant to be smart, yes? Find... find a knight. Or... or anyone. Anyone at all who can help. I... I don't w-want to d-do that again. It... I can't! I... I can't face it anymore!"

The raven did not even respond to her shouting.

"I don't w-want to hurt anymore. I don't w-want to be alone in here. They... they killed daddy, they're going to kill my br-brother, and... and... and me too." She swallowed, and whispered, "I don't want to die. Please. Little bird. Help me. If... if you get help, I'll... I'll m-make sure you always have f-food and... and I'll make s-sure anyone who hunts you gets their h-heads cut off... and... and..." she trailed off. "Please."

She asked the ravens for help every day, morning and evening. No help came.

Slowly, inexorably her head turned towards the thing that the man who was nice to her said that she should sign. He was nice; she got nicer food when he came and he bought bruise balm for her wrists and ankles. He said that if she signed it, they wouldn't take her into the courtroom every day and wouldn't put chains on her and she wouldn't be hanged and... and Cearl might be saved as well if he signed it too. If she signed it, she wouldn't be a princess any more, but... but she'd still be a duchess, and one who wouldn't get hurt anymore and... and she would be let out of the cell and she wouldn't be so very, very lonely locked in with no one to talk to.

She couldn't face another day like that in the court. She just _couldn't_.

Princess Sophia of the House of Stewart pulled herself to her feet, and on aching, stiff legs tottered over to the seat by the table. In numb fingers, she picked up the quill provided.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise de la Vallière had lost almost track of time in her windowless room. Day? Night? She was no longer sure. She no longer even had the sense of tiredness to keep her time adjusted. Once, she had meals, but she was now certain that the Sheffield woman was having them delivered at any hour of the day or night to keep her disorientated.

She dared not ask the guards who came to her; neither the ones who were sympathetic thanks to her little letters and who she smiled at, nor the ones who glared at her. That would be a sign of weakness, and her dignity must be preserved.

It was one of the few things she had left, as Sheffield reduced the size of the room again and again. Now it was barely wider than her bed. The furniture had been smashed to pieces by that woman's spirits. Perhaps she was meant to get splinters from the broken wood which had been strewn over her bed and the floor and so suffer, but her thickened skin did not care about such things. She now had sharpened stakes of wood tucked into her underthings, and though they might not be enough to break down the door, Louise was quite sure that they would be enough to kill a man.

Of course, with sufficient warning, she would be able to tear her metal bed apart and get more functional weapons, but she was not about to do that in the mean time. Not until Sheffield took away her mattress, which would be tantamount to a declaration of war. When she did that, the dead-eyed woman would find out once and for all if her door could really withstand Louise's fury.

But for now, she ate what food she could trust – which was rather more than she once had, for enough guards had been swayed by her messages that most meals came with at least one illegitimate addition – and forced herself to sleep. Not because she had to, but because she needed to conserve her energy for later.

And because at least in her nightmares, she was free. Free in a burning world, yes, free to watch that which she cared above destroyed, free to undergo all kinds of mental torments, but free, nonetheless.

Upon a silver desert, within her own mind Lousie de la Vallière lay, and listened to the whispers of her own voice thrown back through fractured mirrors.

"Why do we wait?" asked the brazen maiden. Unclad as always, her inhuman skin marred with burning runes which now hovered at the edge of understanding, she stood proud and tall. Hands on hips, she blotted out the burning sun. "Why have we not simply crushed them? Make them sick with glory! And let them burn!"

"Why must we act?" asked the azure-robed goddess, kneeling beside Louise. Her hair cascaded down like falling sand, warm against the girl's face and she stroked her hand. "Why do we not endure and grow stronger, and outlast them? Just wait. They will weaken. You will grow stronger. Can you not feel the trickle of prayers from those guards who long for your release?"

"Why do we not act?" asked the gravid mother clad in indigo ice. Her touch was chill against the girl's brow and stung faintly; her other hand rested Louise's abdomen over the dimpled scar mark, reminding her of the pain. "Why have we not punished them for their unforgivable insolence? They marred our beauty. They bought pain to us. They threaten sweet Henrietta, and we cannot permit that, for she is our beloved friend and we want her happiness. They may have _killed our child_. Make them suffer. We must make them hurt."

"we want escape," hissed her shadow, who lay underneath her. Her own wandering hands flickered over her body, invasive and degrading, and Louise longed to be free of the disgusting feel. "why have we not escaped yet? escape, yes, escape! that is all that matters! escape!"

"Bring clarity to the disorder," the woman of the symmetries sang, in ten thousand voices like chiming crystals and fingers on wineglasses. She was stronger now, her crystal-lit form and colourless-burning eyes brighter as she knelt by Louise's feat, in supplication. "We know better, don't we? We will obtain freedom, because it is needed. Already the commoners are subjugated to us; they recognise how things should be. Albion dares overthrow its rightful rulers? That should not be; we know this! We will make things right! We will save the prince and princess, and restore them to their thrones!"

If the crimson lady of the storm said anything, the girl did not hear her. Madly the red spectre danced at the edge of vision, but nothing was heard from her and no advice was forthcoming.

"Remember yourself," Marisalon urged, nervously looking from side to side at the versions of her mistress cast through other lens. "Remember what you want."

"I..." Louise breathed. "I want all of this. Everything. Yes. Just a little while longer." She gazed up at Marisalon, her eyes gleaming green in the light, and her lips seemed to move on their own, talking for her. "They say just what I want, between them. They say what I want, because I say what I want. Here. In my nightmares. In my dreams. The voices in my head aren't something outside me, they're _me_. The memories are there, and they're saying that _everyone _is at least two separate things... no, three. Thoughts, feelings and flesh. I'm just... _more _than that. I'm more than most people. I'm more than mages – mages might be thoughts, flesh, feelings and familiar, but I have you, and I have them." She gestured around her, hands scraping up sand, and the not-hers seemed to strengthen as she drew them in.

"They locked me in here to make me mad," her mouth said for her, "but I am not going mad. No. I think I'm going sane. And I'm waking up."

Louise de la Vallière woke up. She opened her eyes to her tiny cell filled with splintered wood and torn books. And she screamed; for once out of genuine fear.

The dream was not what had scared her. No, it had not scared her one bit. It had felt right. There had been the disturbing feeling of her own hands on her, touching her in a way she had not controlled, and it had felt right. It had felt wonderful. It had felt like _power_. She had taken it, embraced it, and even now inside her she felt something new burn. A spark – a spark like staring into the sun that tasted of the brazen maiden – which promised to ignite when she needed it.

No, what had scared her was the _lack _of fear. And that terrified her to her very bones. Because in the dream, she had been, and had not been her. And the existential terror of becoming Other and welcoming it was fresh in her head. She had been her, but had not been herself. Or perhaps it had been the other way around. She had been herself, but the mind which had been thinking for her was not her own mind.

For the first time, Louise de la Vallière paused, and considered what power enough to escape from this place might cost her. The concept of cost for power was in its own way strange – though Mother had made dark mention when she thought her daughter had not been listening of the burdens of square rank and how it set one apart. But now the question was put before her by herself; would she become the her surrounded by embracing, caressing not-hers?

She heard the rattle of the hatch, and ignored the accented words from Sheffield.

Yes, the girl decided. If it would get her out of here, because this place was odious to her eyes. If it would give her Sheffield's head, because right now she hated that woman more than anyone she had ever hated before. Marisalon had been right, damn her, for she needed to remember what she wanted to do with this power, but as it stood, she would, if only it would free her from this torment.

* * *

{0}

* * *

There was a scuffle outside the door to Cromwell's office, and the sound of raised voices. The man just about had time to look up from his paperwork and draw his wand before the door burst open.

"Oliver!" said the warden-proctor assigned to the princess, face red from his sprint from the Pale Tower. "She signed!"

Cromwell dropped his wand, which clattered against the table. "In truth?" he blurted out.

"In truth!" The other man paused for a moment and smoothed down his mantle, adjusting his collar, and walked over to the desk at a more sedate pace. He carefully placed the signed papers down. "The handwriting is somewhat shaky and there are tear stains on the parchment, but it is her signature on each of the documents in order." His fingers rustled as he sorted the papers. "One and every of them. The pardons for the Reclamation and all who partook of its righteous cause; signed and initialled. The death warrant for the prince; signed and initialled. The founding document of the Holy Republic and the writ of delayed abdication; signed and initialled!"

"It worked!"

"It more than worked! Oliver, I would be comfortable taking this to the clerical courts of Romalia itself," the warden-proctor said, grinning like a cat who had just acquired a bowl of cream. "Even the pope cannot nullify this, for the foundation and the writ of abdication is based on the very justification of Romalia itself, and if..." he cleared his throat, "... and if an heir of Brimir – who by canon law can speak _ex imperia _– cannot 'pass authority over matters temporal and secular until the next Founder comes', then Romalia has no legitimacy to contest the abdication!"

Oliver Cromwell popped his knuckles. "Well," he said, "I do believe that means the charade of these trials can finally end. We have a hanging for that arrogant young man to attend to, and once he is out of the way... why, I do believe our sweet princess can be crowned and we will have the final seal of legitimacy in the eyes of the world! As God himself is our witness, he favours us and has made this all possible! Let none gainsay this glory!"

* * *

{0}

* * *

The day was clear and cold. A crowd had gathered before the Traitor's Gate of the Pale Tower, and their breath steamed in the chill air. Last night, the passage through a cloud had coated everything in moisture, and it had frozen, painting everything in pure crystal. Already the muck and filth of Londinium had marred it, though, leaving the white smeared with grey and brown.

There were ravens sitting on every free surface, jostling for position. Their sky-blue eyes were locked on the dark gallows that waited.

A drum sounded in the still air.

"Present the condemned," the sergeant of the guard called out, his voice crisp.

Out from the tower to the south of the execution yard came the Prince Wales, flanked by scarlet-clad members of the New Model Army. His hair was washed and he was clean, and the weight he had lost while in jail passed unnoticed. The man was dressed in the full splendour and finery of the royal family; a symbolic gesture in its own right. Conspicuous in its absence was the crown worn by the heir to the throne. That rested upon the head of the Princess Hibernia who, wan and shaking, sat up in the spectator's box beside a smiling Oliver Cromwell. From the point of view of the crowd, the bonds which kept her restrained to her seat were hidden.

Step by step, Cearl of the House of Wales shuffled towards the gallows. He was unable to stride, for his legs were bound. The crowd rumbled and roared and surged; the armoured figures of the New Model Army held them back. Step by step he drew closer, towards his death. And his sister watched him walk, in the knowledge that she had signed the warrant for his execution.

* * *

{0}

* * *

A scream sounded out from the prisoner in the fifth cell, and something in the heads of men broke. All through the smoke-filled room where off-duty guards spent time, figures flinched and the more nervous dropped their drinks.

"I have had _enough_," snarled one guard, a brutish-looking man whose pouchy face spoke of long and hard drinking. He was already on his feet, but now his knuckles were whitened and his expression contorted into rage. "That is it! Enough! Someone has to shut that thing up! I cannot take it anymore!"

"Jack, you..." another one began.

"Shut up! It... the screams in the night! I was woken up twice yesterday by that!"

There was a cough from a blond man, whose hands shook slightly as he lifted his mug. "The maids are getting freaked out because they can hear her even closer, you know," he said, "and the food this morning was cold, and do you know, William said it was because they were nervous!"

"Yeah!" agreed the first one. "Well, listen up! I can't take it! And the bosses are doing nothing about it! We tell them she's a pain, and nothing happens! Well, we should go and bloody shut that thing up! I have... I... I have had it up to here! No more! It ends!"

"You're just on edge," someone tried to mollify him. "We're all on edge, what with the cold weather and... and that Sheffield woman and the _things _she does and that nasty business on Watersday and the cold food and..."

"And that screaming! 'Svoid, what's the matter with you all! I don't care if that creepy foreigner wants that prisoner kept alone; we get the key, we teach her manners! How hard is it?"

One of the priests – a good sort, who didn't act too uppity in the eyes of the men – gently shifted in his seat. "I..." he wetted his lips, "I don't think that will solve anything." There was a haunted look in his eyes when he added, "Certain... bits of information have... have come into my possession, and... and I can only say that if the one in cell five screams, it is because of the attention that... _that woman _pays to her. If the rumours are true, then we are all... all damned men if we allow Lady Sheffield to keep on with what she does. I... I have prayed long and large, and... I fear for my soul, and..."

"Oh shut it!" roared Jack, the twitching man. "I don't care 'bout that, not right now. Not when she keeps on screaming like that!" To rumbles of agreement from other guards, he added, "So what I'm saying is that we should go see the governor, lay it flat to him if he's in, take the keys if he's not! We had this bloody rebellion so cloggie-loving freaks wouldn't boss honest hard-workin' men around! And yet they do nothing to shut that clog-wearing 'crat up! If any other prisoner did that, we'd be allowed to punish 'em! This one? Nothing! Who's with me?"

Scuffles broke out between the guards as those whose nerves had been pushed to the limit violently disagreed with those who had been hearing the rumours and reading the notes of maltreatment and treachery by those who had sent dead-eyed-Sheffield to this tower. And in the end, it was the former who won out, and whose heavy boots tramped their way up to the governor's office, forcing open the door to reveal his absence and the wall of keys behind him.

All Matt Fitzgerald could do was scuttle up to the door of cell five, peak through into the horribly cramped confines, and blurt out a warning he prayed would be enough, before running away. This could not stand; not as something honourable men did. He would have to find those ones who had read the notes, had seen the truth, and act to protect that vulnerable girl's honour – or at least avenge her.

But too soon the angered mob had arrived at the cell, with the key. They had their truncheons and they had their fists and they had a gleam of madness in their eyes; the madness of men pushed beyond their limits.

And as the door opened and the heavily built, armed men rushed in, their victim – slight, underfed, petite – smiled a dreadful, murderous smile.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The last body fell to the ground. Casually, Louise de la Vallière dropped the piece of broken wood the length of her forearm. It hit the ground, and splattered, throwing up a grimy mix of blood, broken wood and sand. The room burned in green and brazen fire; her forehead was a cross-shaped brand into an inner sun.

She wiped her face and her forearms on her bed covers, leaving them scarlet, and then carefully and deliberately bound the long gash on her arm from where one of them had lunged with a knife. The girl unfastened the buff jacket from one of the more intact corpses, fastening up the heavy garment over her weeks-worn torn dress. She went barefoot; none of their shoes would fit, and her soles were now tougher than boot leather anyway. In one hand, she carried a solid oak truncheon.

From a man's shirt, she tore a strip off, and bound her hair behind her in a ponytail. It had been getting in her eyes.

And so she said farewell to her cell and the corridors around it, leaving behind it the burned and sand-flayed corpses of a dozen men.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The guard was facing the other way, and she was barefooted. For whatever reason, he failed to notice the green glow. He did not even hear her as she padded up behind him, and grabbed his head with one hand, slamming it into the wall with brutal strength. Fire licked out from the cracked skull, scorching the wall, and he fell to the ground spasming.

"_Fairest lady,_" Marisalon asked, a trifle hesitantly. "_Where are you headed? What do you seek?_"

"The chapel," Louise growled, mostly to herself. It was merely thankful she could read the signs around this place. "I'm going to ask someone who can speak Romalian where Sheffield is. And where she keeps her _stolen _things so I can get my..." and she stopped speaking, to drop into a defensive half-crouch. She had almost walked into a squad of four guards, and they were already recoiling in fear from the green glow around her and the shouting already had started.

She _moved_.

The first man took the truncheon straight on his forearm, viridian flames burning through his padded jacket from underneath. Bones crunched, and he screamed in agony, but Louise was already moving on. Burning sand howled from one hand to leave a woman faceless, and the girl ducked to catch the descending blow from the third on her own baton. He might have been able to stop the first jarring counterattack, but the second was too fast and caught him on the side of the head. He fell like a sack of meat and the one standing opponent looked more ready to wet herself than fight.

With her free hand, Louise grabbed the bulky, red-nosed woman by the throat and pinned her against the wall. From outside, they must have made a comical pair; a slender young girl holding up a fully grown woman by her neck. The guard was not amused, though, as her heels bashed against the wall behind her, fighting for purchase.

"Sheffield," Louise hissed at her captive. "Where!" She tried in every language she knew.

The woman tried to gasp something, and Louise lowered her down enough that her feet were on the ground again. She did not let go of her throat. "Down!" the guard managed to croak out in broken Romalian, despite the pressure. The woman's eyes flicked across the expression her captor wore, wreathed in a terrible glow and with not one smidgeon of mercy in her cold gaze. "Under! Stair down," she tried to point along the corridor, to the long oxen-powered lift shaft, "... heavy door! Down down stair! Long down!"

The sixteen-year old girl dropped the woman, letting her fall to the ground and retch, gasping for air. She followed it up with a solid kick to the thigh, drawing a yelp of pain, and a violent twitch.

"_I feel that was plenty merciful,_" Marisalon quipped. "_Are you still going to go to the chapel?_"

"No," Louise said. "There'll be more guards there, and I need to save my strength for the Sheffield-thing. I can feel a slight ache already. And... I think I need to stay in close confines. Stairs are good for that. And," she paused, clutching at her head as the world washed itself in shades of gold. Marble halls unfolded in front of her, high chambers which disturbingly felt in their own way not dissimilar to the Pale Tower. And then she was back in reality, "... and I need my Staff back," she managed. "This truncheon doesn't cut it."

"_Literally._"

"What?" the girl asked, padding down the hallway on sticky feet, leaving her screaming victims behind her.

"_... it is a blunt object? It literally doesn't cut... oh, never mind._"

"Marisalon. Shut up." She drew a calm breath. "I can't believe two months ago I'd... I'd never have been doing anything like this," she said, releasing the breath. "I... I wonder when I'll start feeling guilty."

"_Not now, my fair lady! Save it for later!_"

She ran across no more guards on the way down the long stairs which spiralled around the lift shaft, but there were bodies here already and bloody smears on the white walls. Louise de la Vallière permitted herself a contented smirk. She had actually done it. Just like Pierre Vallequin, in _The Prisoner of the Black Tower_, she had seemingly driven an entire fortress to infighting and chaos. Just through a few notes and a few words and keeping them up with the screaming and...

"_My highly beautiful and manipulative princess of the green sun,_" Marisalon said, "_you are being excessively self-satisfied. I do not think this was all your doing; nothing should fall apart that fast. There must have already been a rot._"

"Well, of course," Louise said, stepping over a body on a landing with stab wounds all over its back, "they're a bunch of traitors. They are thus, automatically morally degenerate. No wonder they turn on each other after a little bit of screaming and a few notes."

"_Hmm,_" the neomah said deliberately. "_No, I think there must be something more. But now we must get out of here._"

"Once I find Sheffield and my weapon... and the princess and prince, too," Louise said firmly.

Down and down she went, heading deeper and deeper. From what she could remember of the outside of the Pale Tower, that meant that she was almost certainly in the underground bits by now. There were other guards who proved responsive to her polite requests, and while some required some persuasion, some – ones who had read her notes, she suspected – were more than willing to direct her to Sheffield.

And so it was she found herself deep in the bowels of the Pale Tower, in front of an elaborate iron-plated door. This was it; the groaning guards who had been protecting this place before she had arrived had confirmed it. She now carried their swords, one in each hand. With a solid kick to the door which left the lock so much ash, Louise rushed into Sheffield's private quarters.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The hammering at the door was incessant. It interrupted the quiet drink the commander of the New Model Army forces stationed nearest to the Pale Tower was trying to enjoy, and with a twist of irritation he placed his glass down. "What is it, man?" he demanded of the runner at the door, red-faced and gasping.

"Trouble... at the Pale Tower! From inside! Lieutenant Havindesh by the gates requests... requests aid and..."

"Must be Royalist scum," the officer said, lurching his weapons rack and grabbing his wandsword belt. "I don't know what in Founder's name the guards are doing letting them get loose, but..."

"Sir," the messenger said, gasping, "the guards are fighting each other! It... some of... ones near the edge, they'd heard that it was about Lady Sheffield from the Lord Protector's office. She'd done something and the guards are rising up and... it's very confused, sir, but the men I spoke to seemed to hate her!"

The sword clattered down from suddenly numb fingers. "Royalist sympathies in the guard of the Pale Tower itself? Intolerable!" the man roared, picking his weapon back up. His face was tomato-coloured. "Call up Welsingborn from the Third with his men, and then get the dragoons in the air! This cannot be tolerated! We cannot let Royalists control the Pale Tower, least of all now!"

The messenger said nothing. He had once had to carry a note down into the bowels of the Pale Tower for Lady Sheffield, and he could well see how people forced to spend a lot of time around her might be somewhat... on edge. "I will require... require written orders to take to the dragoons, sir," he said, following standing orders for the use of the beasts in cities. In truth, he did not think it was wise to call out the dragoons like this, which would be a sign of weakness the population would notice... but he was not paid to think.

"Right away!" the officer snapped, grabbing a piece of paper and scrawling the blotted orders down. "Get them airborn to catch runners, get me mages who can shut this down, and get me my aides!"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise de la Vallière stepped out of the broken door, eyes unfocussed, and retched. Lord. Founder. That place. That smell.

She was going to have nightmares about this day for a while. She could feel it in her gut. There had been dried blood on the floor and the stench of iron and faeces in the air. Things of bone and iron had been piled into corners. There were crystals on the workbenches; windstones and firestones and earthstones and waterstones wired into things which resembled the constellations. In the centre of the floor, there had been a carefully arranged pile of teeth, surrounded by markings in the First Tongue. Marisalon had translated the words for her. They... they had not been very large teeth.

There was one thing which was actually certain. The Sheffield-woman had never slept in that place, for all that she had thought it was her quarters. There was no bed there for her. Beds for others, yes, beds for her... for her experiments, but no bed for the woman herself.

Her knuckles whitened around the sword which had been on one of the desks, under an arrangement of crystal lenses. Her staff-glaive, the Staff of Destruction had not been there, but what she had found there was her husband's sword. It had called to her.

"Come on," it whispered to her, even now. "Let's go kill, yes? Especially the cold woman. She wanted to enslave me, and that's not all right! Not at all. Especially when she just wanted to study me, and not use me to kill things at all! So we should stab her, again and again. And then cut off her head and burn her to ashes."

That seemed like a very good idea. The sword spoke to her, and it was feather-light in her hands. For all that it seemed old and rusty, it was not made of mere iron or steel; the brass-and-green fire which she wore as a gown clung to it, as if it was an extension of her self. That much was already clear, because she had unleashed herself and the blade upon the things in those terrible rooms, and though it might not have been as sharp as the Staff it was ruinously fast.

Louise spared a glance behind her. Already she could see the smoke in the air, from the fires she had started. She had burned and she had cut and she had smashed those clay pots marked with the First Tongue word for "binding" on them, unleashing the spirits trapped within. The synesthetic clouds of otherness had rushed out, and even despite their strangeness Louise could tell that they, too, longed to be free.

There were screams from up the stairs. Presumably, the spirits were taking their vengeance on those who had been allied with their binder.

"You should catch up with them, or else the fun will be over," her sword advised.

Sword in hand, Louise de la Vallière climbed up the stairs again, and men ran from the glow that preceded her.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The barricades on the first floor were reinforced, and more and more guards were gathering there.

By and large, the ones here thought of themselves as the loyalists, faithful to the cause of the Holy Republic. They were not the ones who had been going in to kill a noble prisoner, and if many of them had a dislike of that horrible Sheffield-woman, well... that was just because they were faithful citizens of the Republic. An Albionese Republic, for the Albionese, and a thing a man had rights to was not being bossed around by some foreigner who did unwholesome things in the basements. And who had men who talked about normal things beaten bloody by those creepy black-dressed clerics she had around her.

Matt Fiztgerald sighed. This whole thing was a mess, just because some hot-headed idiots had gone to hurt the beautiful girl in one of the cells. When they – 'they' being him and some friends had gone up to help her, they had been repulsed by the thugs who'd drawn arms on them. So they'd fallen back down to the entrance, to control that, and make sure that no prisoners or traitor guards got out, and that they could get help from the outside when it arrived. There... there were spirits in there, by Founder's Void! Men couldn't deal with those things! They needed priests and mages!

They had solid men at the cordon, and hence it came as a surprise when they came fleeing back to the main barricades, babbling in fear. The light that followed them hurt the eyes, a sick greenish-brown that flickered like firelight.

He saw _her_.

Beautiful. Terrible. Holy. Barefooted, gore-splattered, wrapped in unearthly fires she stood before them. Her eyes were holes into an inner sun, and no man could stand to hold them without terrible force of will; her hair twitched and swayed as if it was a living thing. The crimson trail of footprints behind her bubbled and boiled. She had a blood-soaked sword which whispered in a harsh voice in one hand, and her other was crooked as if she was holding an unseen wand.

There was fear there; there was certainly fear. But at the sight of such... such wonder, such power, his heart quailed and fluttered to her, like a moth to a flame. He could not explain such feelings; he merely knew that Lady Sheffield had been right to fear her, and despite that he would follow her if she but commanded him.

And she spoke. "Sophia," she demanded of them, with a heavy Tristainian accent. "Cearl. Where?"

His heart sank.

For the Prince Wales had been hanged three days ago, and the Princess Hibernia was long gone from this place. And while someone who could speak Tristainian hesitantly explained this to her, he flinched and shivered, for fear of disappointing the sacred terror before him.

The scream of rage came as no surprise.

* * *

{0}

* * *

She was too late.

She was too late.

She was too late.

All the killing. All the maiming. All the subtle manipulation and overt inspiration of fear, and she was three days too late to save Princess Henrietta's lover or that sweet little girl. All her power had been as naught because she had not been _fast enough_. She had been so sure that she would be able to rescue them, so sure that everything would be there for her to get there in the nick of time that... Louise de la Vallière screamed in sheer rage and frustration as hot winds blew through her mind.

"_My lady!_" Marisalon snapped. "_The next step! You cannot rescue them now, hence, get out of here! As quietly as possible, so you can run into the city, but escape!_"

Yes. Yes, that was it. She had to get out of here. She had to. Yes, Cearl was dead; the man behind the barricades said he had seen him die. Yes, they had taken the princess away, to some secret place in the custody of Sheffield... and that meant there was no revenge here.

"Kill them all," her sword whispered to her.

So what she had to do now was escape. Escape, so she could hunt them down. Escape, so she could protect Princess Henrietta. Escape, so that she might live. Wreathed in wrathful flames she marched towards the barricades uncaring if they fought her or not, because they were in her way.

They chose not to, in a babble of Albionese which had men almost raising their weapons before they lowered them again. Perhaps they were aware that with a blade in hand, they could not strike her and she would have their blood. Perhaps it was sheer mindless terror.

But either way, the men and women at the barricade parted to let her through, and she broke into a run. She had to get to the exit. She had to. An ambush inside the great chamber, treachery and madness; she had to escape! Bare feet slapping against stone, she sprinted down halls she had seen once before, sword held in both hands. There might have been a portcullis blocking egress; once one bar had been severed to cheers from her blade, the green fire consumed it over precious seconds, leaving only ash.

The first natural light she had seen for days nearly blinded her. It was late evening, and the blood red sun on the western horizon was lost by the viridian radiance which illuminated her.

Someone shouted something up ahead, and shielding her eyes against the light she could see silhouetted figures. Serried ranks stood, in dark metal armour which reflected her green corona. The first rank knelt, weapons levelled. A second rank was behind them, and a third waiting for the next shot.

The shining sun before them laughed, a bitter, desperate weary laugh, and charged.

"Fire!"

The first rank erupted in smoke and flame, the zip of musketballs tearing pocks into the stone of the Pale Tower. The charging figure flickered to falling sand where they would have passed through her, catching one upon the side of her blade. The second fired, and there was no time for a third, because now the brightly-burning one was upon them, cutting into their tight ranks with reckless abandon.

In amongst the middle of the men, Louise de la Vallière chopped and she cut and she lunged with her husband's sword. Gouts of crimson blood and green flame erupted from men who tried to club at her with musket butts or dropped their weapons to draw knives; they met a too-light, too-fast sword which screamed battle taunts at them in their own tongue. She darted in among the close ranks, her own lack of height working for her, and as mage-officers fired upon their own troops to try to cut down the terror, she was shielded by their own side.

One beast roared overhead, and another. Fire washed down from a flame dragon, setting men and their blackpowder alight. The four-armed goddess-titan of cold light merely screamed her defiance to the heavens, and the girl at the heart of the conflagration flashed back to normalcy at the centre of a teardrop of burned and screaming bodies.

She launched herself forwards again. The casualties she inflicted were slight compared to the ones caused by attempts to kill her among the tightly packed men, and she ached and wearied, growing more and more tired. The end was in sight, and yet her foes seemed all but limitless. Her hair had entirely escaped from the tie which had constrained it, and it now lashed out as if it was but another limb; snatching men to pull them off balance, yanking a levelled pistol off-target, brachiating over an attempted block.

It was not enough, and wind lashed out from ahead, sending her and the men she fought flying like skittles. The triangle-class wind mage she faced kept his wand levelled on her, as another rank of men – how many were there? – levelled their weapons.

She was crying, Louise de la Vallière realised. Her tears flash-boiled into steam and her face was smeared with blood from both herself and others. She had countless grazes and gashes and cuts, and she realised that she was bleeding heavily from her left arm... had she been shot? She couldn't feel it, but she did not appear to be feeling any pain at all.

Betrayed. Imprisoned. Confined. Ambushed as she tried to flee. Was this how it really was going to end? Before... before she could even extract revenge on those who had done this to her? Louise de la Vallière closed her eyes, foreign memories flooding every thought in her mind and every breath in her lungs as she grasped for anything, everything she could.

For a heartbeat's span of time, her eyes stayed closed.

And then someone else opened them.

* * *

{0}


	18. 17: Hail to the Queen

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 17: Hail to the Queen**

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**I.**

Starless velvet above, stretched shrouding all  
(No! The night's sky! Nocturnal light-eyes fill it!).  
Treachery is her end; treason tore her down,  
broke her body, pierced her breastplate.  
(Ay! And her aeons-worn armour? It is absent!)  
Light burns around her, luminescence a blaze in darkness,  
(How can this be! Her halo is greened-bronze?)  
What is happening? Her memories are hazed.  
So she fights. Foe-death has been hers forever.  
Something lurks within, subtly insinuating secrets  
she does not desire. Against dark-iron men,  
the spear-storm is safe. She spits her defiance.

In a circle of scythes, her sword sways  
grass-green and verdigris, growing against adversity,  
for the harvester is harmed, and he lacks  
the might he must; he is maimed and murdered  
by the whirlwind. The woman  
fights with all her skill, in skin unfamiliar.  
What is her name? She knows not.  
A haze hangs heavy, holding tight her  
muffled memories. Some mortal mask  
conceals past crusades, contains the clarity  
which is her regal right. Wrapped in wrongness  
she dredges deed-details from the deepness of days departed.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**II.**

The maiden squats in the mud, her manacles heavy,  
two suns above her. The sizzling heat  
(Green radiance growing eastwards; gold at its greatest above)  
matters not to her masters, for they are not men.  
And slave-holders speak, saying "Glory to the sacred  
mercies of our divine master. Maidens of the slave-race!  
You shall fight, and those of you who fare well  
shall live longer; those who lose  
give their hearts happily to the highest of holies!"  
(But she is human, and the heat nags at her,  
burning her skin, beating her body.  
If only the suns were soft-hearted, gentle and safe for men!)

They demand; she does. In temples she duels,  
black-glass blades in hand. The blood of those  
weaker than her paints skin, the woad of war.  
She kills without count. Her own kind  
are but a few of her freely-offered foes.  
She is small, her knives serpent-quick.  
If they chip and shatter, she chokes instead  
constricting air, capturing life-sighs.  
A skyclad warrior, she remains scarless.  
It is a mark of mastery, as she murders.  
Opening bone-guards, breaking bodies  
soul-seats cut out, to sizzle upon heated altars.

It comes when she is covered in spilt life,  
a great beast dead, glory from beautiful crowds.  
And dawn's light shines. Day's-rise pink around her,  
a kiss of captivating wonder caresses her.  
Everything changes – even the girl knows it.  
(And yet she shudders – some shape flits before  
her mind's eye. A memory that is not hers.  
Of lavender and the promise of love,  
desperation over glory; despair over pride.  
An intrusion on memory, insinuating itself  
into her thoughts. Who holds the secret truth?  
For it is not her. Forgetfulness fills her.)

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**III.**

The grand gate is before her. Gold it lacks  
and this is wrong, for the Redixala passage  
should be here. She was so sure of that.  
Her blade sings – blood-coated from life,  
gore-smeared by death – with growing glee speaks,  
It is not her weapon; never has she held it.  
She has not seen it before. Something is so terribly wrong.  
An unheard voice, one of the vile vanquished  
hollers in her head. Who could do this to her?  
Has madness seized her? In mind's eye does she dream?  
She fights for her life; flinches as foes fire  
down upon her. Death she returns.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**IV.**

In war's warm embrace, wielding knives  
of shining gold, she shows that  
which once she worshipped why  
dawn-light brings death. Deva are duly damned  
by blows which in bleak blackness  
and brilliant battles break the undying,  
leaving no losers to lament. Lives ended lie  
in death-forests days in width.  
No less, her lordly gifts  
change her, channelled into  
violent acts. Vanquished are man's foes  
through the hands of three five-score sun-kings.

Bright banners flap, bringing breeze-born  
glory to gleaming legions of  
ten thousand dragons, terrible and beautiful.  
Silver strangers subsume slain foes,  
dance in stolen faces, daubed in argent light.  
Monsters, murderous in their malevolence  
greet their friend-banes and she is grateful for it.  
Star-seers; subtle, all-seeing,  
weave and wind , warping the world's weft,  
favouring fell deeds with fantastic fortune.  
Needed are such necessities, else none could stand;  
unified is the host, youth-fires sky-bright.

One act secures her age-worth. Anchored against  
a horde filling horizon-span, horrors beyond human  
measure massing. Their monstrous master  
overshadows them. Oh! This origin of worlds  
takes to the field. Terror fills titanomachs,  
holds hale hearts in heavy hands.  
She speaks from shadows, a shining star-bringer.  
The charge is set! Champions cheer!  
And are crushed as ants, armour rent,  
foe-bane legions falling on the fouled field.  
A sword-sacrifice suffices to scale the sides  
of the mountain. Murder at her hands ends it.

The colossal corpse collapses – cold ice-winds blowing –  
no succour sought in the slaughter-house reek.  
The hell-fight continues, and while she healed  
from weeping wounds, the waters of the West  
became bile and bone, barbs of black iron  
driven into dragons' defiled bodies.  
She has love; a secret light which eases life,  
but she must not become distracted – duty is all.  
There is no peace; never any quiet.  
She thrives on it, but thrice-cursed conflict  
grows wearisome and she wishes to rest  
before being thrown back into bitter war.

The blade-storm blows; blood breaks  
on sea-walls soaked with sorrows.  
Fire and frozen water and flesh-bane  
rush in riotous revelry. Righteousness rebels.  
A chosen champion chases the chariot  
of the lithe life-flow. In lesser victory lies loss,  
for silent cyclones are born from screams  
and the quicksilver quiet in newborn's wake quenches  
all knowledge, leaving nothing but noiselessness.  
Such are the triumphs of this troubled time  
that later lesser years would sing laments.  
But they are victories and vanquished are their foes.

Even yet! Endless lives are ended,  
discarded in the darkness, dust that cannot block  
the brilliance of titans. The broken brutality  
of their ends ensures that the endeavour  
will be spoken of by splendour-draped survivors  
once weeping waters wash away the waste of  
A hundred-hundred heroes. Helplessly, she holds herself  
to remember the rain-countless reaped,  
knowing that namelessness waits in nepenthe  
for all the foe-slayers, save a feeble few.  
In immensity, glory is inglorious and ignominious.  
Some things master even the memories of men.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**V.**

Night descends. Now a nocturne note hides streets,  
the cloak of light-loss clasping all within  
and fog fills foetid alleys. The foulness of this city  
is veiled by vapours. Yet viridian fire marks violence  
as mayhem moves mercilessly, murdering where she passes.  
Damp are the streets, dank and dark  
save where she sheds blood and savages men.  
Tight quarters are telling; terror seizes troops,  
for the fearful killer leaves foes cast down,  
sorceries defied by supernal skill  
in shadowless sunlight, shining youth-bright.  
Those days were past, she thought. They are not.

But numbers are telling. Battalions – man and beasts –  
are sent after her, armed and alarmed,  
to hunt the tooth-breaking terror  
who smashes skulls. Small comfort to her  
victims left piled high, but violence breeds vulnerability.  
Shots shed red blood, shaking arms weaken, tire.  
The unexplained world saps her. Under shadow  
of tower tall, ten tens wait. Turning, and two men –  
the deceased foreguard – are gone. One deed cannot delay her  
but a bonfire-soul – broken, beaten – is a beacon  
and might is not enough. Her mane extends,  
clinging to clay-baked walls. Climbing up, she flees again.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**VI.**

Hark! Victory is seized, violence is ended  
with ecstatic celebration and executions.  
Who would not cheer? The world is won,  
and cast-out titans are castrated and bound.  
From new-won heaven's heights holiness,  
itself rewards the righteous with regal reign.  
And she is queen of all! Quicksilver, stars and sun all bow.  
Some speak of favours bought. She silences such sedation.  
Crowned with thunder, the dragon-blood crowds  
march at her orders. The mutilated left mere servants  
behind when bound. Their bodies make mountain-biers.  
All hail the new peace! All hail humanity, slaves raised high!

But sun-princes are poor pall-bearers; prideful in their power,  
her crown they contest. She crushes the first.  
The second, too – the ceaseless rivers of sacred  
Nuh-ah-Mai dammed, for nothing should oppose her.  
Holding heroes wielding honed blades is hopeless,  
even with thunder crowned. A throne of threatening blades  
obtains nothing but pain. Ochre wobbles, unstable.  
To shining-sons she speaks, "Shall we, together  
bring about a new order? Break not the peace,  
and three hundred may – thrice-blessed I pray –  
in Heaven's eyes ascend, holding high its flame."  
Pacts are forged. Peace now reigns golden.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**VII.**

The forbidden fighting art of fierce  
Gorol Thrice-Damned calls out. Gifts of rage she knows,  
presenting their price. Both pride and prudence  
make her reject them. Madness would not make easier  
her actions. Holding her hewing-knife,  
blade seeks sorcerer's throat; it is blocked.  
Rocky rubble-slave takes it, ripostes with  
stony strength. She strains against the force  
and screams in pain. Scabs open up,  
and her body protests; bones grate, battered.  
A leg is swung low. Golem lands heavily,  
Wordy weapon ends it. Spell-weaver is next.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**VIII.**

Without war, it is a time of wastefulness  
and she loses herself to lust. Lesser men may lament lesser wars,  
but throneless, the thrice-triumphed queen rests.  
Flesh meets flesh. Flirting leads to passion.  
Mindless muscles; mechanical indulgence;  
the techniques of all creation, turned to teasing.  
For a short while, she is sated.  
If the battle-fires are gone, banked to wait,  
"War has passed! Why not enjoy the world we won?"  
she says lazily. Lounging on her seat,  
her power is gone, now a peer among peers,  
who sits among them, sipping wines divine.

In time passed soon, it turns tedious.  
The feelings of flesh, the flings and flirting  
are stale and staid; her stomach for such things  
wanes and weakens. She welcomes it  
no more, nothing she has indulged  
has quenched her queenly thirst in centuries.  
In place of pleasure, her pride is her passion.  
Reigning not, but respected and revered  
she leads by example, the lost lives  
of past pact-brothers passed on to their new-comings.  
Readiness should not ruin, righteousness not die  
by the passing days of pleasured princes.

And yet! The youth are draped in rich yellow-gold,  
fury-enriched yet callow, fearless in their ignorance  
of true total war. Trouble comes in candleflames.  
All-blazing battle is gone. Beaten out.  
Some know not how to fight, sapped of all strength.  
"Why are they weak? Where is their warrior spirit?"  
she says, speaking secretly to other survivors.  
"We are war-mongers; weapons are what we  
should share among us. Shields are our shame-bane."  
So she stirs strife. Starts feuds from the shadows.  
Scandal would ensue if discovered. Scars have taught caution.  
Light-hearted, she lets her hands remain clean.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**IX.**

A towered bridge rises, tall and triumphant.  
Fire within her pulses, fiercely flaring into stone  
and wrongness fills her. Righteous rage  
at worlds worn thin, which wearies her thoughts,  
cannot be enough. Contemplation is cancelled  
by sky-beasts soaring, and burning soul-light  
of foe's hue, fooling even her.  
Anger empowers her; and the arrogance of an autarch.  
Men in armour, meaning malevolence to her  
throng the bridge around her; they are thrown,  
dolls drowning as down it goes, doom-seeking.  
She falls too; foetid black waters her newfound friend.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**X.**

Wars, woe uncounted, world-breaking weapons;  
she has seen it all, shrugged off and committed  
atrocities beyond count. All things  
have passed her age-honed gaze, she holds.  
Once she was sure. Something, a secret, is spoken,  
and nightmares banish nepenthe from nocturnal hours.  
In colossal caves, the cold corpse-creators  
whisper weft-shaking world-screams.  
The truth emerges; trouble trembles within  
her heart. Holding tales from hallowed halls  
of remains ruined, revenge she righteously seeks;  
five proud young princes are praised, not punished.

From lightlessness' love she learns  
to scream, scraps of scar-memories  
torn away to torment tortured  
recollections of rivals and reaped friends.  
"Who holds such hubris and horror  
to his bosom; a babe bloodless  
whose hands have never held  
spears singing?" she shouts, snarling.  
"Whose fires are feeble; whose fists are fleshy?"  
The fools – she frets – fear not her fury.  
She is old; of origins once-known  
but washed away by when's white waters.

A relic of red fields, she relinquished the now.  
Her battles are long gone, and bones of her once-banes  
in days departed have decayed to dust.  
Back to marvellous Meru, masterly wondrous place  
she sets her stride. The city of cities  
sits so beautiful, in the sun's sight,  
and broken-hearted it is bile-bitter  
to a warrior without weapons; woe to those  
who live a life whose liege-goal is lost.  
Her city grows surrounding her, a splendid shell which  
shines to reflect the sun, shimmering where all see,  
sealing out the world. She sadly sings, alone.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**XI.**

River currents carry her, ruin left in wake.  
Bonfire still burns, but its brightness dies.  
Lifeblood leaks out, lost to lacrimal night.  
With shaking arms she swims, sword still held,  
for sky-beasts chase her, flying in firey night,  
and other alien hounds too. Another time – she thinks –  
this challenge would have been cherished.  
But weakness wraps her; weird happenings  
have left their lines. Lights ahead!  
A jetty, boat moored! Gently she eases  
her broken body out of the water, bruises moaning.  
The pain has returned, power of old foes passing.

She hides – her? Hiding? How can this be?  
But battered flesh is bitten by blades  
and viridian flame swirls around her, a violent mark  
of the confusion which caresses her weary mind.  
In a boathouse she waits, bandaging her wounds  
with aged cloth. Agony spikes through her arm  
as she digs out a dark-metal lump  
and pinches shut the puncture. Pain is no stranger  
and mad memory flickers. A hint of mortality.  
Cries from outside, wood creaks under footsteps;  
she is found! Flight is foolish  
wounded like this. Weapon in hand, she steps out.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**XII.**

The centuries slip by in slow succession.  
Amongst the remains of those she repudiated  
she sits on her throne, silently shadowed by  
the wasted world, which in her words  
grew golden around her great sacrifices.  
She complains ceaselessly, of the callow cruelties,  
trite treacheries and troublesome studies  
of the youth of these years – and all are young to her.  
"Five Gales fought for this? The First were flayed!  
What would Waanaho whisper, weeping openly,  
if your iniquities were known in our long-ago war?"  
she croons, ignored. They care not for her words.

The names of friends are forgotten, they know not who  
she drags from the depths of drowned  
history lost hereafter. Who are these heroes?  
What deeds did they do; how did they die?  
She can say who they were, and six or seven more.  
Countless centuries have fallen; careless clocks grip her,  
hold fast even the hallowed halls of heaven  
and ruin their records of those who  
seized the seats they now sit upon.  
She sees now why old sword-brothers  
have set sail, seeking the sight of the city-king,  
for at least old foes – fables too – would fear her.

Those who wear the weapons which won the world  
do not shake at her name, and never will.  
She is kin to the statues, which stand faded by paths,  
vigilant over travellers. The vanishing children of now,  
mayflies who heard her name, a myth mentioned by mothers,  
tell tales of her. Twisted by forgetfulness,  
praise comes to her, not the princes who deserve it,  
and even then eyes widen, events disbelieved but still  
amusing babes who play, answering questions by rote.  
The passage of years, perceived not in its passing  
has unmade her. Though unconquered by blades,  
years have brought her down, like hounds on a hind.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**XIII.**

They bring her down, bow-thunder piercing body  
in sordid swampland. She shakes and staggers,  
holes in flesh dribbling heart's blood,  
tainted power in truth all that  
keeps her standing. Cold numbs her heart,  
fires within dying. She fades, freezing,  
and the riders – ready and waiting – have drawn red  
from her once more. Freedom is far away  
and her blade, bloodied and battered,  
slips out from slick-ice claws  
to fall down into foul foetid waters.  
It voices, vocal, but vehemence is naught.

She understands little. Unanswered questions  
pulse through her mind. Pain too, piercing  
every thought. Escape escapes her.  
She falls to kness, fingers scrabbling in swampmuck,  
helplessly seizing upon the time-aged hilt  
of her dropped blade. A dragon roars overhead.  
And ceaseless animation surges from the sword  
snatching control of her – this – skin. Snicker-slash!  
The wyrm is now dead, wings severed from corpse,  
and strength floods her limbs, strange and unfamiliar.  
The sword sings in her hands, screaming to the world,  
not in the words of foes, but in her native tongue.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**XIV.**

She is old. Obsequious servants say  
they cannot see it. Could they be less subtle?  
Snowy locks and leathery skin  
put lie to their pathetic platitudes.  
She does not hide it; no death-denial for her.  
Flame-haired ice flees from this reality;  
she will not. The world was once hers  
and her pride is that of a prince of the earth.  
Upon her ancient throne, under ancient canopy  
she rests, stone reduced to rubble  
by sand-counted years, centuries too vast  
for man to grasp. Mortality draws near.

She is ancient. Aeons have passed.  
Her youth is buried under years.  
Her tomb is ready; tall and proud  
spires – city-sized – sprawl across landscapes.  
And she is tired. The truth is that  
melancholia has seized her. She mourns memories,  
laments long-dead friends, and allies lost to her.  
She is eccentric – an eclipsed sun overcast.  
She speaks not against the sparse mercies  
of a modern era maddened by power.  
She wonders, woefully, what world  
her second coming will see, and she is sorrowful.

No stars paint the sky. Stretching, she stares up.  
Is it that time again? In truth the creeping  
years sprint by. Yellow banners bright  
parade glories she once knew, in past beloved.  
Feasting and festivals; she was full long ago.  
Those decadent days are gone, and her partners are dust.  
She attends because she must; mostly she remains  
within her palace city, a woman wrapped in bygones.  
Old comrades call on her; she is cold, callous.  
She grew away from them. The green-eyed man  
beside her is her ballast to the world.  
He announces, "All goes as was foreseen, my queen."

A brawl breaks out, squabbling kits. Plates are broken,  
swords are drawn. Subtle whispers echo  
about the hotheads. Their heated argument  
is ended by evisceration. Every head turns.  
The shouting starts. She cannot share her disdain.  
How far have they fallen? They fight like great foes.  
And lightning strikes, born of nostalgia. Lies are revealed.  
The jade-armoured giants around the room are just as she would  
place murderers and malice has manipulated them all.  
The tactics are true. Terrible realisation burns  
and she laughs. Long peals sound as celestials squabble.  
And dragons nock arrows on drawn jade-bows.

She springs to her feet, spear called to ancient hands,  
long-worn armour light on still-lithe body  
while children – arrogant, sure – are chaff  
To the ranks of reapermen reddened with gold's blood.  
How the worm turns! How the world spins,  
and conquerors are conquered, killed by those  
who had been servants, harmless tools.  
Roselight ravages their ranks, ripping through  
men clad in jade, as once the mighty mountain had.  
Death becomes her, doomed by  
the cold, precise, elegant calculus  
of those who remember war is not theatre.

She still fights, though her staid heart is stilled.  
To be manipulated in this way, just as once they had manipulated,  
so murder would come, as they had murdered.  
She knows this. Nine heroes fall by her hand  
and the door is near. She sees her doom past it.  
White ranks arranged, armoured, armed, aimed,  
and ready. The wrathful ranks close in.  
Mauls mash, mutilate, mangle, maim, _murder_.  
Quickly the cry goes out, "The Queen is dead!"  
It is not true, but by inhumane fate  
the last words she hears are that lie  
made true by mere moments. Mortality takes her.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|

* * *

**XV.**

Once more she collapses. Wounds unclosed  
she falls. Fatigue floods every vein.  
She barely notes the lack of bannered-soul through bruise-pain.  
Death has her. Denial is for naught.  
How long has it been? How can it be  
that all the world is strange and a woman wields  
the titan-power of tormented once-foes?  
The sword speaks, softly seeking answers.  
Quietly she answers. For she is a queen,  
but of what, when, and wherefore  
she cannot say. Can she drag herself under cover?  
Barely. Bodies lie around her, battle-stench coppery.

She is fading. That much is a fact.  
Not only mortal flesh, but also in memories.  
A ghost pale and wan in ghastly truth  
that this tale is another's. A titan-slave  
contains her keter-soul, captive to their whims.  
In shared blood, she shakily scrawls  
a message. A warning or threat of mutual  
animosity and anger. Alien thoughts fill her,  
sinking into sour sleep, seeking the waters of Lethe  
which are beyond her grasp. She whispers softly  
a final flashing thought, fading with her self.  
One more mind-image, the memory of a name: Merela.

* * *

|  
– O –  
|


	19. 18: The Morning After

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 18: The Morning After**

* * *

{0}

* * *

The world was washed in greys and whites. They clung to the land, cloying, heavy, laden with moisture, and where they touched they left a coating of dew. Mad twirls of fog were blown around by the movements of the air, revealing the sodden landscape and stunted trees. And occasionally, when the breeze blew right, the bodies scattered on the ground could be seen.

Here, a man lay prone, his shattered skull spilling greys as well as reds in this washed-out world. There, a women had burned, though only the distaff markings on her armour allowed her gender to be identified. Her mount had been butchered; the mutilated corpse of the wind dragon was already slowly sinking into the soft mud. The listless skin of its severed wings flapped forlornly in the breezes, a tattered banner of a lost legion. Around it were yet more corpses, strewn like rag dolls where they had fallen.

A raven with eyes the colour of a summer's sky cawed, once, as it hopped onto a man's body. Vacant eyes stared aimlessly at the world, before the sight was lost forever as the bird started to feast. Other birds were eating their fill too, among the reds and browns. Those avians who had been fortunate enough to stumble across this banquet in the clouds would dine well for days.

Louise de la Vallière awoke to a world of mist, crimson and the melancholy cawing of crows.

Her head hurt. And so did the rest of her. There were barbs of hot ice in one shoulder, in her chest – several times over – and her left arm was a searing mass of cold. Her breath crackled when inhaled, and bubbled when she breathed out. She had thought that being shot through the abdomen by Sheffield had been painful. This put such things into brutal perspective.

She must have passed out from the pain, because her next memory was opening her eyes again with Marisalon's voice in her mind. "_Oh, my beautiful and wonderful and glorious princess,_" the neomah burbled, "_you're thinking again! I can hear you! And... Unspeakable Colour, it hurts everywhere!_"

Marisalon was certainly right there. It hurt too much to speak. 'I know,' Louise thought. 'I... I... I was just in the courtyard, wasn't I? Where am I? And why... why does everything hurt?' She twisted her head, panting from the exertion. She was filthy, soaked in mud and blood and less pleasant things.

And she felt... she felt violated, in a way which attacked her most fundamental sense of her own identity. Her skin felt filthy – not on the outside, but on the inside. The currents of her thoughts floated with alien flotsam and jetsam, fragmented memories which seemed only loosely connected to one another.

She let out a sob, a shuddering, hurt movement. If anyone asked her, she would say it was just from the pain. It wasn't. Her thoughts came in drips and drabs, and that she had to think a moment to remember her own name... that much was terrifying.

"_You are Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière,_" Marisalon pointed out.

'I know that. Now,' she said, too weary to even snap at her head-familiar.

"_My lady, please. Please, try to stand. They will still be coming for you. You are injured, and you must find a better place to hide if you cannot run._" The neomah repeated this several times, until the words had made their way through the girl's head, and Louise began the long, slow and painful process of standing up. The feat was only achieved with aid of her – her husband's – sword, which seemed to be stirred to life by the movement.

"All right!" it declared, in a decidedly masculine voice. "Now that? That was something which I haven't done properly in centuries! So much killing! And the fire around me and the killing and so, so much magic! I'm feeling more alive than I have in as long as I can remember! This almost makes the time I spent at a bottom of a swamp worth it!"

"Shut up, sword," Louise muttered, as she dragged herself upright. Her left arm was definitely broken, and more than just broken; she didn't dare to look through the bindings which someone had put on it, but they were sodden with blood. It felt almost exactly like the time she'd broken an arm being kicked by a horse, but sharper.

Her vision swam as she straightened up, and she nearly fell over. That was a bad sign, wasn't it?

"_Yes,_" Marisalon said. "_You have lost a lot of blood. And need to eat. Please, please, my princess, just concentrate on the most basic things you can. See if any of the bodies have any food on them or anything medicinal, and try to find somewhere which isn't a swamp to collapse in. We can talk about... about the... uh, events of last night when we're not in the open, and you have somewhere to lie down._"

That made sense. She should listen to Marisalon. The neomah was... was doing the thing with the making sense and the thinking and all those things which it hurt too much to do right now. And the neomah had said she could lie down when she did those things, so she should do them and then she could not have to be upright any more.

Limping like an old woman, Louise de la Vallière picked her way across the mist-covered field of death.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Londinium was burning. Smoke entwined with cloud haar, leaving hot fumes and chill mists to swirl and entangle themselves. The clanging of bells and the clatter of armoured soldiers in the streets was muffled by the obscuring fog, which was in turn painted a murky crimson by firelight.

Here, a platoon of soldiers from the New Model Army formed a bucket chain, passing water along to the fires which were consuming all of Bakers' Street and heading North; there, men and mages alike helped tear down buildings to establish firebreaks. By the banks of the river, earth mages were helping to build temporary pontoon bridges over the remains of Londinium Bridge. The fires had spread out from the centre, consuming the houses built upon its side and leaving them and the supports as gutted ruins.

And everywhere, the rumours spread. They spread among the bakers of Barbers' Street, watching their livelihoods go up in smoke.

"Did you hear? A messenger of the most high, taller than a house and made of fire descended in the cloud haar, and... it's a punishment! For the sin of killing a king!"

They spread from soldiers in soot-smeared armour to worried women weeping for lost husbands.

"They're saying it was Tristainian saboteurs... that they set fire to a gunpowder depot on one of the great hills, and the fires are spreading out control!"

They spread among the looters from the South End, the poorest willing to accept the risk of a burning building for food or wealth.

"The Lord Protector's dead! Didya hear! They got Cromwell, whoever did this! Wot a laugh, eh?"

That certain rumour was something that Oliver Cromwell could confirm to be false, as he sat in his office, staring down at the map of the city. Of his city. Red pins marked districts which were ablaze; black those where it had been extinguished, and the cast lead figurines of his men were being moved around, trying to save as much of the city as possible. A ball of sheep's wool rested on the Pale Tower, and no small number of soldiers were there.

There was a constant flow of men to and from the map table, updating the positioned of the soldiers and the fires as soon as messages arrived from the city outside.

"So far as I can tell from reports, most of the fires seem to have been started by our own men," Lord Fairfax said, dryly. "The green glow wasn't hard to follow, at least at first, and some fool ordered fire dragons sent into the city to stop anyone escaping from the White Tower."

"Well, that worked, I don't think!" Cromwell snapped.

"Quite so, but that meant that when... whatever happened, they attacked too, and then when news came and you ordered in the dragoons of the Second, their wind dragons only fanned the flames. Not to mention I have... disturbing reports that at least some of the escapees were able to survive triangle-class fire magic enveloping them completely. Some seem spirit-ridden, others might well have just been phantasms, but... Lord and Founder, who knows?"

"Some? Have you got a full list of the ones we lost from the Pale Tower?"

"Not yet." The dark-haired man sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "We know no small number of Royalist captives were killed by one of the two factions of disloyal guards, and the other one seemed to then take it upon itself to free the others and 'keep them safe'... those lot were the ones who claim to be loyal, while the other lot are just thugs. Some of them appear to have then got their hands on wands, and... well, there were killings, and some of them escaped out into the city when everything was in disarray. The break down in morale and morals has been shameful, and liberties were taken on some of the noble captives; if word gets out of that..."

"Disgusting," Cromwell spat. "Base wretches. We trusted them, I trusted them with holding these captives, and look how they repay me! And the warden..."

"... is dead. That seems to have contributed to matters."

"Ah." The priest tapped his teeth. "Well, that at least saves us the cost of an execution for such shameful ineptitude. We are certain, though, that... it was Louise de la Vallière who is known to have escaped? She was the one of the green fire?"

Lord Fairfax winced. "Her... or some spirit that wore her shape," he said, cautiously. Dropping his voice, he leaned in towards Cromwell. "Lady Sheffield, in her rooms below the tower... Founder, she seems to have been doing things with spirits," he breathed, relying more on the other man's ability to read lips than noise. "Dreadful, heretical things. And they escaped... I have lost squads in there to those things. They stole the bodies of captives and my men alike. Some of the things some men I sent in saw down there, that they bought back to me... it makes me sick. Did you know of this, Oliver? Did you know of such dreadful sinful deeds?"

Cromwell was silent. "I suspected... only suspicions... that she might have summoned spirits for knowledge," he mouthed, "but that was the only way I had to explain some of the things she knew. Anything more? No. We will talk of this later, but after this..."

Fairfax shot him with a cold glare; Cromwell flinched. And then the moment was broken, as a man in thick leathers who smelt strongly of dogs came thumping in.

"My Lord Protector!" he said, panting, "The hounds... they cannot track her. Even the Iberian scenthounds find no trace, and their noses are not natural! Captain Greyson of the aerial corps requests more winged horses and other fast beasts for the sweeps; vision is next to nothing in this cloud haar, and we have not the mages to search for one person's fire in this cold."

"We have few to spare; you will have to draw them from the messenger corps if you allow this," Lord Fairfax muttered.

"Tell him to make do with what he has," Cromwell said, his voice harsh. "If he cannot make use of the squadrons he has, I will find someone who can! Am I surrounded by fools? Find her!"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Clouds hung around her, thick and cloying. The pain was a spike in her mind which kept her going. It would have been so easy to lie down, to sleep – and possibly drown in this sodden land. But when she faltered, when she did not have the endless sequence of steps to put her mind to, then her thoughts went to how much it hurt. And it hurt dreadfully.

Marisalon's babble was just a background noise, against the red-hot spikes from her arm and side and stomach and legs and… and everywhere. Even when she tried to listen to the neomah in her head, the words were forced from her memory, leaving only whispers of descriptions of the wonders of the City.

She lived in the present, stinking mud oozing between her bare feet as she stumbled and waded across the fens. She could not tell a questioner of the passage of time nor of anything which happened beyond the red-narrowed cone of vision in front of her. She drew on her inner reserves of will, her arrogance, her refusal to bow down to the pain, and that more than anything was what allowed her to take the next step.

"_Louise!_" she heard Marisalon shout.

"Wha-?" she muttered to herself, groggily. She was vaguely aware that Marisalon had been talking at her more than usual, but it simply had not been registering.

"_Bells, my lady. Ahead, to the right somewhat. They sound similar to one of your churches, and not like the alarm bells in Londinium. So... uh, my lady, it is most probably a church,_" the neomah continued, when her mistress simply did not appear to be grasping what she was hinting at. "_And a church means that there is a settlement there. Well, unless you have remote isolated monasteries here, or something along those lines. But even those are a settlement of sorts. The point remains, this requires caution, for there are people there, but it is also possible to get shelter in some hidden place and obtain food._"

She was famished, Louise realised, as her mind sorted through her aches and pains and came up positive for hunger. And yes, now that she had been dragged back to the normal world, she could hear the tolling of the bells. They were muted by the mists, but they were coming from somewhere ahead of her. Perhaps she had been walking towards them without conscious thought, drawn by the chiming. Looking down, she realised she was walking through rice paddies; yes, the town couldn't be that far. She counted five chimes, and it had taken time for her to notice them; that meant it was probably at least the eighth or ninth hour of the morning.

It was not much of a settlement; barely more than a hamlet. She would have called it a one-horse town, but there were two tired-looking mares tied up to carts by the church which – made of stone – loomed over the town square.

The girl glanced at the clock on the tower. Those had been the bells for midday? As late as that? The Albionese were good at clockwork, she dimly remembered from lessons at school. They had to be; this stupid miserable wet island meant you needed a better way of telling the time than a sundial. And Eleanore had said that clockwork was something to do with astronomy, though she couldn't recall exactly what. But she was getting distracted through the haze of pain. If that was midday, then much of the village would be inside at midday prayers.

Gritting her teeth, the girl forced herself into a stride, and mercifully her sword did not protest loudly at being used as a crutch. The houses here were a mix of wood and stone. She wanted a place to hide. A place to rest, where no one would look for her. A little sneering voice in her head – which wasn't Marisalon, though it did sound a little like the brass-skinned maiden – compared these houses to the ones on her parent's estate and found them wanting. The plaster was none too clean, and she could see bits of the houses which were rotting where they stood.

Aware of the limited time before the locals came swarming out of their church, she hastened her search. In the end, she found a half-ruined shack, roof crumbling all down one moss-covered side, and the garden rife with nettles and brambles. The place stunk of rot and foetor, and as she wriggled in through the rotting boards which crudely covered one window, she could not help but notice that 'Sam luv Bet' had been carved into the stone floor before her. She caught her broken arm against a board, and nearly fainted. But she managed to slither through, and lay on the floor, black spots dancing in front of her eyes.

Straightening up – and feeling her chest muscles scream at her from the effort, she looked around the house, opening doors and poking her head through with sword in hand. To her surprise, the loft space looked like it had been replaced and cleaned more recently than the rest of the building; the wooden beams looked like they were unrotted. There were a few boxes and crates stashed up that end of the house; perhaps someone had decided to use the rotting dwelling as storage space, rather than build a new barn.

Her head reeled as she climbed the ladder up into the loft space, and she had to pause to gasp for air half-way up. But once she was up, she found that there were a few goatskins packed as wadding against the walls, and she just about managed to find one to repurpose as a blanket.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"This is not natural," the hard-faced blonde woman said, lips pursed. "In all my time with the hounds, not once have they failed to track a man, woman or child from their known trails. But we have checked all over. We have even walked them to places we know she shed blood; led them to taste it. Nothing. They cannot find a trace."

Captain Hortenson, of the Second Light Foot, did not resist his exasperated sigh.

"Sigh at me all you want, sir," the tracker said, "but do not mock their noses! We've done this before! We already caught that inbred earl who made a run for it, and we worked from pretty much nothing but the knowledge that he got out through Pennington Street and that place had burned! It's not through our deeds she can't be found."

The woman's hand went to the gladiform which hung on her neck. "It's magic or it's spirits, sir," she said, hoarsely. "An' most mages don't know enough to hide their trail from a scenthound, and we know she wasn't flying. An earth mage could do it, yeah, some kind of transmutionist. But beggin' your pardon, sir, but they're talking about spirits. You can't trust anyone who has anything to do with spirits, filthy Protestants that they are."

The captain's knuckles whitened around the table, and he glared at his lieutenant sitting in the corner. "Haven't we had about enough of this?" he asked rhetorically. "Witches and spirits and rumours, oh my! All we've been tasked with is finding an escaped noble prisoner! Yes, the men are saying she's a fire mage, but I'm a fire mage too! 'Svoid, commoners go mad when the cloud haar gets too thick, and I'm sad to say I think the madness might be catching!"

"It's not madness to say the hounds can't get a scent, sir," the tracker mumbled rebelliously. "'Cause they can't. And that's that; with no scent, we can't follow her. And we've already lost three hounds to the smoke… you don't understand sir, we breed them for large lungs and sensitive noses, and the smoke's making them ill. If you can pick up a trail outta Londinium, we might have better luck there, but only with Founder's fortune."

The lieutenant in the corner made a discrete hand gesture, and the captain dismissed the dirty woman. "John," she said, when the houndsmistress had left, "I've been looking at the maps." She jabbed her finger at the map of Londinium before her, with red pins attached. "We know she destroyed Londinium Bridge here," she said, "and the green fire… Founder, it sounds mad to speak of it, but it's what the other regiments are saying… but the green fire, it was seen going down river. If it hadn't been for the cloud haar, I suspect this would have been triviality in itself."

The man slammed his hand against the solid stone wall, the light of the candles flickering in the breeze and casting long dancing shadows over his face. "But it wasn't triviality, Ann!" he snapped. "It wasn't triviality at all. Why couldn't the Fourth Light Foot do it? They were stationed here! They would know what they've seen, what they've… they've been so damned useless in even helping us! Leaving us to deal with arrogant dragoons and the like who want us to scout because Founder forbid they make their steeds walk."

The woman rose, running a hand through her short-cropped black hair – worn that way so that she not inflame the passions of men – and shook her head. "Oh, that's not the worst thing I've heard," she said bluntly. "The Fourth are nearly in open revolt, if you listen to their officers. They lost nearly a company's worth of men last night, in deserters, injuries and deaths. The reason they're on fire control duty is that they think the men'll refuse to leave camp if they're ordered after one girl. One miserable clog-wearing heavily injured girl." Her expression was twisted into contempt.

"Cowards," the captain agreed. "To think that the New Model Army goes to pieces because a mage... possibly spirit-ridden, but just a single mage gets them when they're unprepared. Though I heard Mackerson had Royalist sympathies, they said, and since he's gone missing, maybe it's not a coincidence..."

"Last I'd heard, they found Mackerson," the lieutenant disagreed. "Dead, washed up on the river. I'd heard that he was on the Bridge when it went down…"

"'Svoid," the captain swore again, tracing a pentacle on his chest with his finger. "Founder forgive me for speaking ill of the dead. May his soul be cleansed and he move on without fear or regrets."

"… which is why I've been thinking," the lieutenant continued mercilessly. "Think of this; we're looking for a single flight in a cloud haar. And we know she was injured, grievously if the word is right. She won't be moving. We're infantry. Our muskeeters are terrible in a haar, and our pikemen and bucklermen can't search through a swamp well. But she's going to need a healer. So we put a squad in every hamlet we can think of, crack down. The iron fist. Let the fliers sweep, and tell the Lord Protector's office we're holding the population centres so she can't hide there. Everything'll be easier in... what, two, three days time at most, when the cloud haar passes. Less if the weather shifts."

Captain Hortenson's face twitched, and he exhaled. "Good idea, Ann," he said, thinking. "Hmm... I do believe I will ask the Lord Protector's office for permission to have us call out some of the militias. Especially the oruki ones, because... there's a bunch of them living south of Londinium, right? They'll know the land. Let them go squelch through the mud in the haar, and deal with the things in Mortlake. We can use that local lot as our beaters, and not have to risk the loyal men of the New Model Army in this vile weather."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise was not entirely sure if she was awake when they came to her. Huddled under the old goatskin, shivering uncontrollably, the passage of time itself was an agony. She would have checked her brow for the sweat-slickness of a fever, but she did not perspire and so she could not tell. So perhaps she had dozed off, perhaps she was hallucinating from a sickness she could not feel, and perhaps the madness merely extruded into her waking hours.

Regardless of the matter, the brazen maiden sat at her right, and the gravid mother to her left. On one side, her own face cast in imperious bronze, eyes aflame; on the other, her features matured, painted in opalescent colours and decorated with indigo jewellery. They made a fine contrast to her, covered in mud, blood – enough of it hers for it to be a bad sign – and dressed mostly in a buff jacket which had been repeatedly pieced by blows. And they were silent for once. A small mercy.

The pain spiked again; her crudely splinted left arm had slipped. Her sword muttered protests as she leant on it, but she ignored it, gasping for air. She had to be strong. If she cried out, someone might hear her in here, and like this she could not fight. And... she moaned in sheer relief, as the red heat in her arm faded, replaced with numbness.

Ice-skinned hands massaged the broken limb, somehow passing through the splint and the bandages, and Louise stared in pitiful relief at her own beautiful face. "You hate them so very much," the gravid mother said to her, running her hands up and down the arm. The love when she stared at Louise was only exceeded by the hate when she mentioned the Albionese. The transitions were terrifying in their rapidity.

Louise wetted her lips, and tried to ignore the blissful lack of pain the hands bought. "You're... you're just a hallucination," she managed. "Or a dream."

"I'm you," the not-her said. The curl on her lips reminded Louise of the mildly disappointed look Cattleya got when she was disappointed for you, and that made it worse. "Don't be silly."

"That... that doesn't make it not true," Louise said. "I'm... I must have just... seeing things in the pain. Or I fell asleep. Marisalon? Marisalon!"

"Oh, we're so silly." A hand sheathed in ice patted her on her heated brow. "Silly, silly us. We're not a dream. We're not mad, either. How can we be? We're only doing what's right. We love Princess Henrietta, don't we? And our parents, and our sisters? And we really, really hate those Founder-damned Republicans, so whatever we do to them, in the name of protecting those we love is not only proper, it's righteous." She took Louise's hand, pressing the injured hand against the icy depths of her swollen midsection. "Can you feel that?"

Something kicked against her hand, and Louise gasped. Partly from surprise, but mostly because the pain from her broken arm re-emerged. "Go away," she whispered hoarsely. "Leave me alone."

"She's lying to us," the brazen maiden said harshly. "She has some good suggestions, but she thinks of other things. We're not pregnant, and even if we were, it wouldn't have stirred yet. That's just what she wants us to believe, to be thinking about. We don't need that kind of distraction. Not when there are still fools who dared hurt us to crush. The entire government of Albion has set itself against us, for what they did. Those insolent dogs killed the Prince Wales, and who knows what they're doing to Princess Sophia?" Green-burning eyes narrowed. "If that Sheffield woman has her hands on her… she's not strong like us. She's only little. Righteousness is on our side should we choose to crush them like a bug."

"Ignore her," the icy not-her said calmly. "Yes, she's right that we should make them suffer, but… it's sort of amazing in a scary way that we can both make life and destroy it, isn't it? Men can't do it. We wonder if Mother ever thinks like this? Whether she thinks that us and our sisters are some kind of… balance for all the killing she's done. Of course, you're killing these people because of love, which is a balance too. So we make those who stand in our way suffer, but first we should go home. To protect our parents, our liege, and our child. Then we can slowly start to drown each and every one of these Albionese dogs." The gravid mother giggled. "We can tie rocks around their feet and sink them to the very bottom of the ocean," she said jovially.

"Go away," Louise breathed. "Just... go."

"Rubbish," the burning girl said, roughly shaking Louise. "We don't care about stupid things like that! We just have to get stronger. Get tougher. It hurts so much, but we're keeping going. That's what we have to do. Just breathe and keep going. Force down the pain so it isn't controlling us, and then continue on. We're showing that we're strong. That we're powerful. Mother will certainly respect us for this. We've been like steel. We didn't break, no matter what that Sheffield-bitch did to us." A cold, imperious smile crept across the distorted face. "We'll have to see whether she breaks when we get our hands on her, won't we? Think about that. That's a good thinking, isn't it?"

"Oooh, yes," the other not-her said, suddenly cheerful in loving malevolence. "We can pay her back for everything ten times over. More. More! It'll be a great help in keeping us going. We certainly can't die or give up when she's still alive!"

"That would be a gross affront to our dignity," the brass girl agreed. "We can't tolerate that kind of insolence towards us."

"I can't..." Louise said in a little voice. "It hurts too much. I c-c-can't. If... if she finds me, I'm dead. Or she can do what she wants. I..." she gasped in fresh pain, tears leaking from her eyes, "... I'm scared. Like this, I'm... useless. Just m-meat. A stupid little... I can barely walk. She... she could do whatever she w-wants to me. My b-body isn't doing what I want it to."

She glared at each of the not-hers in turn. She felt so useless. But uselessness was something had been used to for her entire life. Madness was not.

"And neither is my m-mind," she said, voice dead. "I'm... talking to you like you're people. And there's a spirit in my head... and she's the... the closest thing I have to a fr-friend in there. And I've... gone m-mad. Twice." Her breath steamed in the clammy air. "I'm... just crazy. A crazy killer. Maybe... maybe I went m-mad long ago, and Mother had me locked up in the attic and that... that bit in Albion w-was me getting more sane, b-before I broke again."

Hot brass reek was exhaled in her face. "Do not mistake strength for madness," her own image in metal and fire said. "Do not mistake weakness for virtue."

"Go away!" Louise forced out. And she was left alone, with only the ice-hot-poker pain of her broken arm and the voice of the neomah in her head for company.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The gloom outside was darker next time she levered herself into a position that she could peek through one of the small shuttered windows. She wasn't sure if that meant that the hour was late, or that Albion was merely moving through some thicker clouds. She could hear the rattle of a cart and the noise of hooves, though, and the unmistakable clank of armour. She thought she could see the dark-armoured figures of the soldiers of the New Model Army, though she was not sure, and lay back down.

If they came in here... well, they certainly shouldn't come in here.

They didn't enter the abandoned house, but neither did they move on. Soon she could hear the patter of rain on the roof and in the already-drenched fields outside. It was a background chatter of falling water, muffling the already-muted voices and noises she could hear from the village. All she could do was wait here.

Wait here, with her stupid, useless ruined body. Useless and... no, worse than useless! If it was merely been useless, it wouldn't be hurting like this! She wouldn't see red whenever she nudged one of her arms! Her body was a mangled piece of useless meat and her mind... her mind was worse. She was terrible, stupid, wicked, mad...

"_My lady_" Marisalon said sharply, "_have you thought about food?_" She repeated the question when Louise barely stirred in response.

"Oh." The girl paused, and licked her lips. They were dry. Dry, and yet it was raining outside. It was astonishing the roof wasn't leaking. Clearly the Albionese knew the miserable damp sodden dank stupid island they lived on. "Tonight. When everything... people asleep. I'll find food there." She gritted her teeth, and forced the next few words out. "Marisalon. What happened last night? I... I..." her voice cracked. "I went mad again, didn't I? Not like the last time. That was just... just crying. A breakdown in my mind from the stress and... and from my husband d-dying. This wasn't just that. This was... actual madness."

The response when it came was grudging, and through the fog in her head Louise was sure the neomah sounded scared. "_It was not pleasant,_" she replied, each word being dragged out of her. "_You simply... weren't there. Like how you go when you are in the deepest sleep, not even dreaming. Which you don't do any more. It was like that again. You weren't there, but your body was acting, moving, talking. And there were those moments where..._" Louise heard a swallow, "_where it felt like you were there, but I was merely standing far too close to see you. Akin to how you cannot see all the City by standing in its streets._"

The rain pattered down. "There... are memories," Louise said slowly. "Scattered ones. Like that one time in first year when I drank several bottles of wine which I'd... I'd got hold of, and I wanted to not just have to think of how much of a stupid useless wretched failure I was. Some of the memories look... look sort of like the bits of Londinium I saw. Most... most of them didn't."

The girl paused, staring out through the crack in the shutters, out into the dark grey mists.

"I felt old," she breathed. "Not... not old like men and women. Old like mountains. Like rivers. Like the night's sky." She whirled, hoping to see Marisalon behind her, and merely managed to nearly black out from the pain. "Marisalon! Who had this power before me? Was it... who?"

"_As far as I know, you are the first,_" the neomah said, with a mental shrug. "_Never before have I heard of a human wielding the power of the Creators of All._" A wry self-mocking note entered her voice. "_It is not exactly as if one as humble as me is privy to the affairs of the Unquestionable; I am a mere citizen. So perhaps they had other such champions before you, and I did not know of them. The children of the Traitor Dragons... the ones who tried to kill you in La Rochelle, remember? They would probably call you an evil wicked anathema, but then again, they may have tried to murder you for a different reason. When I was enslaved by them, I saw first-hand how controlled by their passions and their dramas they were. It reminded me of home._"

There was a muffled choking noise. And then Louise began to sob. It was not great chest-heaving shudders; no, it was not. That would have been better than these pathetic, mute little noises. "I'm damned, aren't I?" she whispered. "I... you're a spirit and I made a deal with you and... that's the sin of Protestantism. And... the first time... leads to more. Th-that's what the Church t-teaches us. Even... once is unforg-" she sniffed, "-iveable. Because once l-leads to more. So... s-something stole m-my body. A gh-ghost or a spirit or... or something. B-because I'm impure. Even... even y-you're controlling me, affecting me, because... because why else w-would I have t-tempted Jean-Jacques like that? M-maybe he wouldn't have died if... if we hadn't sinned," she hoarsely muttered.

"_My lady, no! No no no! This is just the pain talking, and you should..._"

"... the six not-me girls I dream of. They're spirits too," Louise continued on between sobs. "They m-must be. They're... trying to make me become them. And... I'm w-weak and useless and... Founder, help me. They make sense, they say things I want to do, so... so they have to be tempting me. I... I... I don't know what to do. I can't... I... it... I..." she trailed off, hyperventilating.

"_You are not damned,_" Marisalon said, her voice lilting almost like a mother singing a nursery rhyme. "_Nor are you wicked or weak. My beautiful princess, you are strong; no other could have tolerated that captivity nor fought their way out like that. Even if you lost control for just a bit, perhaps it was not such a bad thing. Because then you fought like even you cannot normally, and, my lady, there are tales of righteous men and women told gleefully in the City – and whispered fearfully in the lands of the Dragonblooded – who channel great powers and give themselves to the holy will of the All-Creators. Perhaps the past champion came to aid you, to make sure you survived. _

"_I am not one of your spirits, though, you must trust me of that, and those strange women you dream of are but your own nightmares; an imagining. Your spirits are of your strange world here, and you know me, you know how confused I was at the strangeness of your two moons. I am not like them, and so surely your Church has never forbidden contact with one such as me?_"

"N-no," Louise conceded, though part of her remained unswayed by the neomah's words. She was in no fit state to contemplate them deeply, though. Her sobs and whimpers were lost against the noise of the rain and the creaking of the old ruined house. She would have cried herself to sleep, but her treacherous mind was not tired, and unconsciousness would not come. It grew darker inside and outside, and the rain grew heavier.

"_Are you feeling any less melancholy?_" the neomah asked, after a while. "_Do you feel better, my lady, after letting it out? Because if you want to live, and want the pain to go away, I have an idea. And yes, my lady, I am being impertinent, because clearly it appears to be the only way to get you out of your self-misery. We found that out last time you sunk into misery, remember? And while I do understand you have reason to be miserable, if those are really Albionese soldiers outside they will look in here eventually, and you are barely keeping yourself going just lying here._"

Louise began to cough, each jerk agony. "Ha," she said, tasting blood. "Ha. Ha. 'Svoid, I hate you so much. Stupid head familiar. Whatever happened to your reassurance?"

"_Gone, like shadows in green light,_" the neomah said cheerfully.

"I really do hate you."

"_I know you do, my fair and somewhat mutilated princess, and I am glad to hear it. I am sure that you will be back to your normal cheerful and kindly-tempered self in no time, when everything stops hurting. You want that, don't you? And for the meantime, when you're angry at me, you'll do more than just lie here._"

Marisalon seemed to be using the chance to be uppity, Louise thought, her head reeling. She would normally be more angry about this. Obviously it was the blood loss, because she'd certainly never normally tolerate this kind of cheek. Not at all. She wasn't letting the neomah address her... well, in a similar way to how Monmon had. In that brief period of almost-friendship which... Founder, that was depressing. Had that really been the closest she'd had to having a friend who wasn't Princess Henrietta?

She could excuse it this once. Because she was talking about stopping the pain.

"_We'll need to find things, though,_" Marisalon said, deep in thought. "_Poison... there should be poisonous things in the swamp. That's easy enough. Alcohol, and a fair amount of it, several mugs' worth at least. If you can find people, you can probably do that. Pure things, pure things... tears, seawater, silver, salt, gold or virgin's blood are traditional. Argh! Curses! You're bleeding all over the place, but... ah, well, it is not to be, my beautiful princess. Which means that salt is probably the next easiest, or coins... coins could do it. You're not crying enough, and it will have dried. Hmm. This village should have some kind of inn place, right? Some place which would sell alcohol? That would do it, especially since we could get most of the other things there._"

"Do what?" Louise whispered.

"_Trust me on this,_" the neomah said. "_There's a way for us to get some help._"

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was dark outside, and rainbow halos painted themselves on the mist around lanterns. The hiss and sizzle of the rain against the metal tops was its own familiar sound. Louise longed to see the moons above her, but the cloud haar was merely a murky blackness which erased all light from the stars. And perhaps in that God had smiled upon her, because that meant that away from the lanterns it was pitch black.

She must not be seen. That she knew. Marisalon had repeatedly reminded her. She must not be seen. She didn't know how many Albionese soldiers there were here... though they had brought at least two carts with them, from the noises she had heard, and...

... well, and she was trying to steal a strange list of things which sounded vaguely alchemical while she had a broken arm and multiple shot-wounds. That was enough of a challenge, even before the issue of violence arose.

The Lord and Founder really were smiling on her, she decided shortly. That made her feel... good. Warm inside, and it helped reaffirm her faltering will. Why else would one of the supply wagons – oh, she recognised those well, from the long journey to Londinium – have been left where it was, in front of what was probably the local tavern? Yes, there was a guard on it, but he – or possibly she, Louise couldn't tell – was huddled up at the front, wrapped in an oilskin under the overhanging roof. They clearly didn't want to be outside in the rain at night on guard duty, and so... they might have actually fallen asleep, come to think of it.

Trying her best to keep quiet, Louise limped up up behind the lashed-down canvas of the supply wagon, and slit the back open with her sword. She held her breath, momentarily. No cries of alarm came. And inside... yes, she thought, eyes straining in the gloom. The neomah in her head seemed to be able to see better in the dark.

"_Wonderful,_" Marisalon breathed. "_Salt, bottles of... why, that looks like whiskey or some other similar spirit, you'll want several of them... oh, there are those wax-wrapped biscuit things they gave us on the way back from New Castle. Get a few of those candles. Gather the things up, and you can use that wrapping around those spear shafts to bundle it up. Don't scream when you inevitably jar your arm._"

It was hard work trying to do this with one hand, trying her very best not to make any noise. Louise prayed and begged to whoever might be listening that her sword would keep quiet, and mercifully it had done so. Perhaps it was sleeping. If swords slept. She didn't really know, and perhaps didn't want to find out, she thought, as she crept back through the rain into her hiding place.

It was agony getting back through the window, but once ensconced back in her niche, she breathed a sigh of relief, and slumped back down. Jamming a candle into a gap between two floorboards, she pinched the tip. Green fire flared between her fingers, fading to orange after a few seconds, and she withdrew her hand.

Somehow... the little bubble of light, the small amount of warmth made all the difference in her cold, probably foul-smelling existence. And the tough, dry biscuits she began to eat were like ambrosia itself. And... Louise paused.

Wait. What was ambrosia? Why had she thought that word?

"_You should probably eat more while you can, my lady,_" Marisalon interjected. "_You have no small amount of blood to replace, and you were not best fed already. I wish there had been more nutritious things there, for I am worried about your diet, but these dry biscuits will have to do. At least they're probably made for soldiers on the march. But we need to get you meat._"

There was a crunching noise, as Louise ground her way through one of the biscuits. "I think I'd be sick if I tried to eat too much," she said softly, warming her hands over the candle. "This... this is about all I can manage."

"_Well, when we've used the alcohol, you'll need to go and put the empty bottle under one of the drips! You need water too; humans do, or they die of thirst!_"

"I'm not thirsty." Silence fell again. "Marisalon?"

"_Yes?_"

"What... what you want me to do... it's... like summoning spirits, isn't it?" She forced herself to swallow, feeling the dry biscuit clinging to her throat like cement. "I... I don't know if I can do it. I mean. It's... I." She tried to swallow again, staring down at the flame. "It's wrong."

"_Oh, no, no,_" the neomah said gently. "_It's much more like the summoning ritual you place so much value on. Why, just like your mages, one of the things that many would say defines a sorcerer is being able to summon someone from the City. And you, my lady, are a princess of the green sun; I was a mere citizen. You outrank a citizen, and it is within your authority to call a serf to obey you._"

"Oh." The girl tried to think about it clearly, tried to think about it without letting the throbbing pain in her arm and in her many other injuries overwhelm her. "So. It's... it's like I'm telling a servant to obey. I'm not... 'supplicating or seeking favour or illicit contract with a fell creature', am I? I'm... just ordering it?"

The neomah made a noise of assent.

"I see. Well." Louise squared her jaw, letting her gaze drift over the salt, the alcohol, the poisonous herbs from the overgrown garden around this isolated house and the other things that Marisalon had told her to put together. "When I've finished this, we can get started."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The fires in Londinium were dying down, extinguished by magic and hard work, but they were not yet dead and from the window of his office Cromwell could see the orange glow even through the haar.

The day had been a terrible one, one that he had never expected so soon after the triumph at New Castle, and he was half-expecting things to get worse. His nerves were shot to pieces. He longed for a good solid drink, but he was a man of the cloth, sworn to moderation. And if he started with a moderate drink, it would quickly become two moderate drinks, and then more.

There was a rap at his door. "Lord Protector," the junior clergyman said apologetically, "but... ahem, Stumper is here to see you. He seems a little... aggrieved about how he has been trying to see you all day. I am sorry... I can send him away if you have already retired for the night, sir."

Oh, how he longed to tell Phalps to get rid of that annoying Tristainian clog-wearer. He really did. But both faith and secular logic told him he should not do that. "No, I am here," he said wearily. "Leave him in the anteroom for five more minutes, and pour us both some wine." He paused. "No," he corrected himself wearily, "give me watered-down wine, and give him sherry. A large one."

After a suitable wait to show that he was not at his beck and call, the Tristainian was let in. And to little surprise, the first words out of his mouth were, "What in Founder's name is going on, Cromwell? Why did you refuse to see me all day! What is going on?"

His eyes narrowed. "Please, do not take the Founder's name in vain in front of me; I am a man of the cloth," he said, to start this counterpoint, before sighing. "As for the rest, what would you have me say?"

"You could start by telling me what's going on, as I asked from you!" the weasel-like man snapped, showing unexpected courage, before flinching. "In the streets, they're saying that Eastbank is on fire! That there is rioting all over the city! That the Pale Tower has fallen and the royalists now control it!"

Oliver Cromwell forced a laugh, though he did not feel very jovial. "Oh dear, is that what you were concerned about? No, that's just falsehood. The fires in Eastbank were extinguished by noon, and most of them were due to an accident setting fire to a street of woodworkers... my men say a candle set light to sawdust when the commoners ran out to help with the bucket chains for a smaller fire. Likewise, though there may have been some looting by criminal elements, it is all under control now. There is nothing to..."

"So you're saying that the Pale Tower has fallen!" Stumper said, his voice rising with an edge of hysteria. "They're all free? Where is Louise de la Vallière? Tell me!"

Cromwell's hands tightened around his wine, but he forced himself to relax. "No, of course not, the prisoners have certainly not all escaped. As I was about to say, the Pale Tower is back under control. Any rumours that it was somehow catastrophically damaged, like the ones that the ignorant poor are floating around, are baseless and seem to mistake a damaged gate for something more fundamental." And when Lady Sheffield arrived back and handled the... concerning magical flares from certain damaged elements of its interior, he would be rather happier, Cromwell thought.

Rising, the Lord Protector folded his hands behind his back. "Yes, it does appear that Louise de la Vallière was one of the very small number of nobles to escape in the confusion, but rest assured..."

That was as far as he got. "You let her escape!" Stumper yelled. "This is the one thing the Tristainian branch of the Reclamation asked of you! One little thing! One girl, known to be poor at magic! Did we not carry out our end of the bargain? Didn't we get you the maps, the plans, the force locations, everything you needed? And you fail at this!"

"Don't act like that with me!" Cromwell snapped, eyes blazing. "She showed magic that she should not have... indeed, signs of some accursed Protestant pact with a spirit! No normal mage could have done what she did; killed their way through ranks of men! Even Karin of the Heavy Wind would have scythed them down with magic! She fought like a girl possessed, not the 'weak schoolgirl' you said she was!"

"Oh, don't play the innocent! There have already been enough rumours about what happened in your Pale Tower with spirits; the kings of Albion were said to consort with them there too! With my own two eyes, I saw a spirit haunting near the Pale Tower! Without proof, any accusations of such involvement with the spiritual will be laughed at! And then the Reclamation will be doomed, because... Oliver, you know very well that you are already walking on thin ice with your justifications for the execution of the Prince Wales!" He mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "To try for another conflict with the Church is madness!

"And don't start on the word from Tristain!" Stumper picked up his sherry, and took a gulp. "I have heard that the Viscount de Vajours has been seen, alive and heading towards the capital... and that was days ago, so he may have already been there. If so, Tristain will know what is happening. At least in part."

Cromwell narrowed his eyes. "I have heard nothing of the survival of Jean-Jacques de Wardes. How long have you know this?" he asked flatly. "And from who?"

The weak-jawed man looked offended, insofar as such a thing was possible when he was sweat-soaked and shaking. "Friends of the Reclamation," he said brusquely, "you know I can't tell you who exactly. Linked to the roadwardens, though. And I got a messenger-bird about it... I have the decrypted message right here!" he patted his pocket. "And... Cromwell! If he is injured... which would explain why he took so long to get back, then we might have more time, but Founder! Who might know what he has been doing in this time! If we have lost custody of his fiancé, and cannot prove a link to spirits, then the Reclamation no longer has leverage over him!"

"Don't you think I know that?" the Lord Protector snapped. "Fear not; the Reclamation will triumph, and Tristain will be liberated from its monarchic tyranny. Soon. Soon enough, Stumper, that it is up to _you _to get your allies ready, or you too will be swept away by our righteous cause, descending from the heavens."

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was done. It had been hellish with two candles her only light, shuffling around on aching knees with one arm entirely unusable, stifling screams each time she put weight on a wound, but it was done. Louise sat back, breathing heavily, while Marisalon ran through the list of proper preparations. Her arms were shaking, blood was oozing out from re-opening wounds, and she felt physically exhausted, but she had managed it.

An unbroken circle, marked in salt. Marisalon had said that it could be any shape, but Louise had made it a Brimiric pentagram. She had practiced enough drawing those that she could do it in her sleep. Things of ritual 'impurity' within the circle; the whiskey, the poisonous plants, a half-eaten biscuit spat upon, and all of them smeared with her blood. She'd improvised too, and found dirt and muck and rotten wood from inside the shack to add to the pile within her salt circle. From what the neomah had said, this was almost like a lure for the creature she would be summoning. On her head-familiar's advice, she'd also put lines of salt at the windows and doors, as a precaution.

Marisalon seemed content with her set-up, and said as much. So. Louise shifted herself over to beside the circle, getting herself as comfortable as was possible in her current condition. Taking up one of the spare bottles of whiskey she had taken from the wagon, she broke its wax seal, and took a mouthful. It burned as it went down. She wasn't used to alcohol of this strength, but she forced herself to take another gulp, and then another. Some of the rest, she splashed into the centre of the circle over the pile, making sure not to spill it onto the salt.

And with that done, she began. In its own way, it was reassuringly similar to the familiar summoning ritual. The summoning ritual which had gone so very wrong and set her feet on the path which had left her here. Maybe this was... a fresh start. In its own way. Either way, she just had to repeat the three syllables – the name, according to Marisalon – until the creature came. There were hand gestures too, but Marisalon had walked her through them.

The problem was how long it took. After the first hour, her voice was a croak, and she couldn't feel her legs at all. Perhaps that was an improvement, considering the ache in them, but the numbness was disconcerting.

By the third, she was running off bloody-mindedness, forcing herself through the pain in the distant promise of relief. All that remained was the ceaseless repetition of the three syllables in a dry croak. The ritual let her wet her throat with alcohol, but the burning that took its place was scarcely better.

By the fifth, she was hearing voices. And not the voices in her head she normally heard. It started with a tapping at the shutter, a dry clicking in the night which... which was probably just the plants which grew around the building blown in the wind. Then came the certain sense that there was something out there, something beyond her sight, something which was watching her. Louise felt the hairs on the end of her neck stand up, and redoubled her attention on the words and the gentle soothing advice of Marisalon.

Then came the voices. Burning, choking, ruined, they started hissing and babbling to her in broken Tristainian and archaic Brimiric from outside the window.

"You killed me," something rasped. "You burned me. I screamed and you didn't listen."

"You leant down and broke my neck."

"She wants an excuse but she doesn't have any left. She can't defend herself. No defence for the unforgiveable sins."

Louise's voice voice almost faltered, but she drew on all she had left, forcing the words out. She would not listen. She was sick, wounds infected, injured, and had been wetting her mouth with whisky. She was hearing things, and if she ignored them, they would go away.

"You can't ignore us. You can't blame us. You killed us."

"You're a monster, not a hero. We couldn't fight back. We couldn't do a thing. We had no chance."

"No one loves the little mad girl. They're scared of her. Scared of her like they're scared of her mad sister and her murderous mother. They can smell the truth coming off her. It reeks. It smells like hot brass and acid."

"The swamp remembers. The swamp hears. It tastes the death you've caused, and the blood you've shed. So much blood. And murder; mad, deliberate murder."

Tears began to leak from her eyes, her vision blurring, but she kept up the monotonous chant. She would not fail! Not even if she was going mad!

"You went mad a while ago. That's what they told us; you went crazy in the cell and made a pact with a spirit to free yourself. We chased the spirit-possessed who screamed in mad voices."

"You burned us all and left us in a bog, unhallowed."

"Sinner. Heretic."

"Protestant."

"The swamp remembers and knows," a ruined female voice rasped through a burnt tongue. "It watches you, murderer."

There was a pawing and a clawing at the window, now – just the branches against it, surely – but Louise closed her ears to it. And thankfully, mercifully, blessedly whatever external measure of time Marisalon was using for this had counted down and the neomah started to tell her new things to say and do, new gestures to make, carefully walking her through the motions.

A sudden baking hot wind howled through the shack, blowing out the candles. For just a second, Louise could see impossible depth in front of her, blackness and silver obscuring sand, rimmed with all-too-familiar green fire. And then the light went out.

The girl went to relight a candle, and winced from the pain. Instead, she focused, the brand on her forehead lighting up and painting the world around her in greens and browns. In this torch-bright illumination, she got her first glimpse at what she had called. It was... Louise de la Vallière – in pain, ill – stared in shock and disgust at the thing which had torn its way through the world.

The creature, the beast, the thing called out in an alien tongue, voice disturbingly like that of a small child. It had ten legs, she could see that much, and it resembled – faintly – a grasshopper. But... um. Well.

Most grasshoppers weren't the size of her fist. And that was before those legs were taken into account, squirming and failing as it leapt upon the pile of rot and filth in the centre gorged itself, trying to keep away from the surrounding salt circle.

"Marisalon," she hissed, her throat raw. Her muscled ached, her wounds were oozing, and... and _this _was the help that she had?

The response sounded delighted. "_Oh, my beautiful princess, you are a natural at this_" the neomah exulted. "_A sesselja, on your very first try! I had worried that it might take you several goes, but no! Perhaps the skills from your world's summoning can be transferred!_"

"It's a bug!" Louise almost shouted. It hurt too much to talk, and a moment's thought revealed that that noise was a terrible idea. Yes, she thought she was safe here, but she wouldn't be if she made too much noise and alerted the village. "I... I don't want a bug like this as a familiar! You... you didn't say it would look like this!"

Marisalon sighed. "_It is a sesselja, as I told you already,_" she chided. "_Remember some of the lessons I was giving you before we went on this rather extended trip to this wet and misty isle? They are born of the Keeper of the Forge of Night, and... well, they render things whole and pure through their affinity for impurity. That is what they do. They are surgeons of flesh and devourers of toxins._"

She sounded rather put upon as she added, "_That is why the least magic required us to gather those poisonous plants, as a lure. And the line of pure substance both draws it in, and prevents it from leaving the summoning circle. It is a very useful trick, that one. Almost as useful as licking tin to stop the passion morays from getting in your tower. I explained this!_"

All the girl could do was groan weakly.

"_The next step. Anoint your hands with the leftover whiskey,_" Marisalon commanded, "_and say the words I tell you to. Say them as regally as possible, command it in the First Language. You mustn't let it believe has any choice. And then reach into the circle, and pick it up._"

She did as her head-familiar asked. The alcohol stung like blazes, but at least it washed off some of the dried blood. The words rolled off her lips as if they were natural and…

… with her iron-hard mind she crushed the will of the cowering Yozi-spawn, feeling the clear crystal note in her head at the precise moment its will broke. "Oh, Mara," she said, "did you really think you could disguise who you were? Why, it was..."

No! She flinched, jarring her broken arm, and the pain dragged her back to... to herself. Instead of the... the other one. The possessor, the defiler, the... the thing in her head. The thing which wasn't Marisalon. She was herself. She was brass-and-green, not dawn-pink gold. And she... reached out again, letting her confusion and worry be washed away by the simple, pure arrogance of telling this _insect _what to do.

"Pentacle of the five elements," she said to herself – through force of habit? For luck? Through belief? – as she took the squirming thing in hand, "bless this creature and make it my familiar."

She felt a surge, a rush, a... a something in her stomach as she finished those words, just as her hands tickled as the bug began to lick the whiskey off them. And then – and it was expected – she still gasped as it dove into her flesh, squirming legs pushing up against her sleeves.

It tickles, was her main thought. She could not manage fear or shock. She was simply too weak. The soft song of the sesselja as it squirmed and scurried through her lulled her, grasshopper chirrups marking its motion as it wove sundered flesh and bone back together.

* * *

{0}

* * *

It was mid-morning when the figure, dressed in a tatterdemalion and damaged mix of noble dress and a New Model Army buff jacket , slithered through the window. Her bare feet were muddy and blackened, but uninjured even when she stepped on jagged rocks. As she paced through the haar-laden streets of the village, it was clear that she was hurt; her limping footsteps dragged in the mud. But she was no longer at death's door, and both arms were fully mobile.

In her right hand, she carried an unsheathed ancient worn sword.

The pain was still there; indeed, in its own way, it was worse, as every muscle in her body screamed at her. But it wasn't fogging her thoughts; it was making them clearer. It wasn't holding her back any more. And inside her flesh, something alien, something demonic crawled, singing childish songs as it knitted her body back together.

There was a soldier of the New Model Army guarding the stables of the inn they had commandeered. She was smoking some kind of pipe, huddled over a brazier, trying to warm her hands. The stalking girl stood behind her, and drew back her sword, ready to sever the head clean from the body, but something stayed her hand. Some little thought, some moment of awareness.

The Republican officer was not much larger than she was. And she needed new clothes. She needed a disguise, something to hide from the patrols. She needed something not torn and soaked in blood and filth.

The last thing the Albionese soldier felt was the arm around her neck, iron-hard skin unyielding against her throat, before there was a clean snap and the limp body sagged in her killer's arms.

In the mist, Louise approached the horses stabled there, laying the dead woman down beside her. They shifted uncomfortably, and stirred; she glared at them imperiously. "Quiet," she commanded; and the beasts fell into terrified silence. There was tack and a saddle nearby, and conscious of where she was, she set to work.

A quarter of an hour later, she was leading her chosen horse out through the rear entrance to the inn, feet wrapped in stolen cloth to muffle its hooves. She had washed herself down in the horse trough and so was cold and wet, but at least she was clean. Propped up on the back of the horse, a pole keeping her spine upright, was the dead Albionese solider. Louise had borrowed her helmet to break up her own profile, and the short-cropped head lolled listlessly. It couldn't be helped.

She led the horse through the fields behind the town, past commoners – who looked rather orcish, all tall and pale and squashed-faced, though they were not quite as massive as that bestial race – who kept their gaze away from the two buff jacketed figures. Curving around, she picked up the road, and stumbled along until she found a sign post.

The sign marked as pointing southwards led towards Port's Mouth. That was a major port in Albion, she remembered. There would be plenty of windships there; she could stow away on one headed towards Tristain. So she would follow this road, heading south – first by Saxe-Gotha – until she reached her destination.

Or at least until she got out of this miserable swamp.

* * *

{0}


	20. 19: A Lost Age

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 19: A Lost Age**

* * *

{0}

* * *

The water in the misty clearing was stagnant and murky. Dark green water plants sprawled across it, choking the depths and making it seem almost akin to grass to the unobservant onlooker. On the far side, a fallen tree had dammed what had once been a fast-flowing stream, and this had been what had formed this pool. Around the edges, the water plants reached out onto land, seemingly not caring whether they grew in liquid or land. Insofar as there was a difference between the two in this sodden countryside.

A lock of pink hair fell down, landing on the heavily torn buff jacket laid out for it. It joined a small pile of shorn hairs. Next to the rent armour was a mostly stripped corpse of a woman, left only in her underthings. Her face was covered with a cloth, but the angle her neck lay at made it clear that it was broken.

Louise de la Vallière checked her reflection in the dark water, and sword in hand, selected another lock to trim. She ignored the grumbling of her blade at the way it was being used for tonsurial violence, and made the cut.

"_Oh, it is a shame,_" Marisalon said, sadly. "_Your hair was beautiful, my princess._"

"Hair grows back," Louise said, trying her best not to feel upset about it. "It's just something that has to be done. Those treacherous women in the rebel forces wear their hair cut short like men, so if I'm going to pass as one, I'm going to have to cut it."

"_I just wish that piling it up inside the helmet had worked._"

"So do I," the girl said through gritted teeth. The back of her neck felt cold, and... it didn't feel right. It would probably take years for her hair to get back to how it was. And she was having to use the sword for this, despite its complaints, because her hair had been too tough for the belt knife the Albionese soldier carried.

At least the unnatural resilience of her skin meant that when she slipped, she didn't cut herself.

When it was done, she 'admired' her work in the water. It was not well done. The cut was erratic and crude, and left her with irregular sticky-out bits where her sawing at it with a sword had been less than effective. It was a man's cut, and not a proper, civilised man who wore it to a similar length as a woman either; no, it was the cut of some commoner workman. On the other hand, it was not much worse than the dead woman beside her, so it would have to do.

Strangely, it seemed to reassure her stolen horse when she went over to recover a biscuit from the saddlebags. Something about having a short-haired rider made the beast less nervous.

"Being used for hair cuts... such indignity," her sword muttered to itself. "I cannot believe such ill treatment. I'm for killing heirs, not hairs. Get it? Heirs? Not hairs? Oh, it'd probably look better written down. But seriously, can we find some heirs to kill? Or at least stab some animals? You humans get hungry, don't you? Animals are food, go stab some with me!"

Ignoring it, Louise glanced at the pool, distracted for a moment. No, she would have to find another place to bathe. She had wanted to clean herself off, but that water looked as much mud as it was liquid. Which means she should probably get dressed properly. She had taken the chance to strip down to her shirt and breeches and air her wounds, but she'd need to get dressed properly. And see if she could put on the breastplate from the dead woman.

But first she knelt by the damaged buff jacket she had used to catch the fallen hair. In both hands, she gathered it up. There was quite a lot of it; her hair had reached down to her mid-back.

A momentary impulse struck her. "Lord God, who watches all things from the Holy Void," she prayed, closing her eyes, "and Founder Brimir, chosen servant of the High who bore the Holy Void against the forces of wickedness, saviour of men, martyred champion. Mighty Malfeas, Lord of the City, from whose hands other worlds were forged, bless me with power. I offer this to you, as a sacrifice to show my intent. Please bless me with success, and keep me safe on my journey home. And give me the strength to strike down all traitors and treacherous dogs who stand in my way."

She wet her lips.

"Water, watch over me. Earth, support me. Wind, cloak me. And Fire, take this sacrifice to the ears of the Holy."

She clenched her fists around the hair, and green fire flared between her fingers, consuming the discarded locks utterly until only ash remained. For a moment, the world seemed lit in viridian, burning away the fog, and Louise smiled. Then the light was gone, and there was only a fine coating of silvery ash in her hands.

Well, maybe she would have divine – or Malfean – favour with what she was doing. Sometimes, she still felt rather uncomfortable at directing prayers at someone outside who she had always been taught to pray to. But it wasn't like she was worshipping a lesser spirit, was she? He too was like the Lord, only he was in charge of a faraway place, and... and maybe it was acceptable to pray to him about things regarding her powers and... and creatures called from the City and other such things. It wasn't like she was casually worshipping a fell spirit for petty things, was it? Anyway, she'd certainly stop if a priest told her that it wasn't the right thing to be doing, but she hadn't managed to talk to one and so she was having to use her own logic to work things out. As long as she prayed to the Lord God for forgiveness, everything would turn out fine.

It was chilly out here, and she had stripped down to an undershirt while she cut her hair to avoid getting it down the back of her neck. Forlornly she had hoped that by hanging out the clothes they might dry out a bit, but this country was so drattedly misty that everything was still damp. When she was further along, she'd have to see about getting a fire going so she could have fresh clothes for once. She was getting very sick of the smell of mildew.

Of course, then they'd smell of smoke.

It was still an improvement.

Now that this unpleasant deed was done, she should get dressed again. She lifted the woollen shirt, checking her stomach and chest for what seemed like the hundredth time. Her pale skin was blotched and bruised. The livid red marks of her closed wounds decorated her torso in cross-hatched lines like... well, like scars she had seen on her mother when she bathed. Her arms and legs were just as bad, scabbed and scarred. The older injury over her abdomen, from Sheffield's strange weapon, was a circle even paler than her skin; lines radiating and branching off from it in a way which looked slightly like a sun and slightly like a street map. And the starvation in the jail cell had taken its toll. She had lost weight she could ill-afford to lose; Louise could count her ribs by inspection. The fat had melted off her from the weeks with mere mouthfuls of food a day. Her face in the water was sunken-cheeked, the baby-roundness gone.

An insectoid leg passed out of her chest even as she looked, and she shuddered. The sesselja was swimming through her body, fixing her torn flesh and broken bones. She still had two broken ribs, and had watched in horror last night as the bug had reopened a wound to push out a lump of lead the size of her thumbnail. It was a vital role.

It was unpleasant to watch. So to avoid having to look at it she dressed herself with her eyes closed, or at least made her best attempts to do so. She had to open her eyes a few times because the women of the Republicans dressed in a way which was nearly identical to their men and she needed to work out exactly how some of these things were tied up when you were the one wearing them. The breeches in particular posed no small amount of problem, and it was only with Marisalon's aid that she managed to bypass this most troublesome obstacle.

Her sword was snickering at her as she hopped around, trying to do up the laces. What an insolent weapon.

The boots were too large, and even wearing the thick woollen leggings the dead woman had worn, they rattled around on her feet. She tried padding them with torn leftover cloth and it helped, but it was thankful that the unnatu… unusual toughness of her skin would stop her getting blisters. If things got really bad she'd go barefoot, but that would be bad for her disguise.

When it was done, she looked at herself in the water, and shuddered. She didn't look like herself. She barely looked female. A hollow-faced woman, with a crude, mannish haircut stared back. Her face was bruised and scabbed; a split lip descended almost the way down to her chin. She was dressed in a clothes of a commoner footsoldier, a too-large buff jacket hanging off her frame. If anyone had told her that the figure which stared at her was the third daughter of the de la Vallière family, a ducal family with power comparable to the arch-duke of Gunneldorf, she thought as she rolled up the sleves so she could see her hands, she would have laughed at their face.

Which was probably a good thing, all in all, although it would have been somewhat better if she was not the one occupying the body which had been so maltreated.

And speaking of mistreated bodies, she glanced down at the corpse of the nearly naked Republican soldier who had contributed these clothes. "You don't deserve forgiveness or grace," she told the dead woman as she picked up her own sword. The woman hadn't owned one, and her long dagger now occupied Louise's belt. "You're a traitor. In all the world, there is nothing more loathsome nor more terrible than a traitor. The weight of your sins holds you down, and you will burn for them."

She knelt, and nicked the woman's flesh with her blade. Green fire rushed out, consuming the body and leaving only ash in a human-like shape, like a mockery of a snow angel.

"But still," Louise said, rising, "I may pray for you and you may find some relief from the torments which await you." Taking her horse, she led it away from the clearing, back towards the long road working its way south.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The onlookers were silent. Even the usual muttering of the Londinium mob was absent, as was the expected sound of people behind trying to see what was causing everyone to stop and stare. There was no need. Every man, woman and child present with eyes to see could see the brilliant blue lightning which crawled over the surface of the Pale Tower, and everyone with ears to hear could explosions of thunder as it earthed itself on the ground, as regular as clockwork.

From his office, Cromwell stared out at the spectacle. His nails were worn to bloody stumps, and in his stress he sucked at his torn fingernails. He had prayed! Hadn't he prayed? He had been woken in the night by the thunder claps and the dawn rising from his southern window, and since then he had been caught in the centre of a whirlwind of frantic orders and desperate faith.

The men had refused to go near it. Not after those dragons had tried to fly over. He knew not what was making it happen, but he feared it. Feared what it might do. He had ordered what men still following his orders to lead an evacuation and form fire breaks around it, but beyond that? He was helpless. There was nothing he could do.

The Pale Tower was ancient. Six hundred years old and more. It dated back to before the Brimiric peoples had come to these lands, before the magic of the Founder Brimir had torn Albion from the ground and cast it into the skies. Some said the oruki were the cursed, twisted descendants of those who had built it, damned by the Founder for daring to stand against him, but Oliver Cromwell rejected such base sentiments. In his youth, he had spent years ministering to the oruki, and he had seen that they too were men, none too different from the commoners when properly civilised rather than running wild in the highlands of Hibernia.

Certainly, he doubted that the Founder would have cursed sinners with the strength of three men and the ability to take a pistol shot to the chest and keep moving. That rather soundly defeated the point of a curse.

His thoughts returned to the ever-present glow to the south. It was all the fault of the escaped Louise de la Vallière. Whatever she had done to it had caused it. He just knew it. If she was recaptured... well, he sincerely hoped that she would die resisting recapture, because otherwise he would have to do things that no holy man should, but which she had brought upon herself with the monstrous number of deaths she was responsible for. And...

... no. His knuckles whitened as he balled his hands into fists, uncaring of the pain from his torn-up fingernails. He had to stay focussed! He was the Lord Protector; others looked to him for guidance. He had to stay calm! He had to focus!

He shouldn't jump nearly out of his skin when a woman coughed in the room when he was sure he had been alone in here, but he did so anyway. "Guards!" he barked, fumbling for his wand. A sudden spasm of nervous terror struck him as he realised that this was where Louise de la Vallière had been hiding all along, in the former royal palace, and... he breathed out. "Sheffield," he said, slowly. "How... don't... you're back?"

"The former princess is guarded," Sheffield said in her strange accent, her tone clipped. "She will not be leaving the place which I left her, though I must retrieve her in good haste. I came once I got your message."

"Yes! Yes! Very good! Have you seen what is..."

Her manly shoes clicked against the floor as she stepped up to his work table. She placed a metal box about the size of a man's hand on it, one finger on the catch. "I looked inside," she said. "The Pale Tower is doomed. I cannot repair it before it detonates, so I will not try. The windstone deposit from which it draws its power is not stable." She paused. "It is no longer stable," she corrected herself.

Oliver Cromwell worked his mouth. "... what?" he managed. "How did you... only golems have been able to get close enough to the lightning and..."

"I looked inside," Sheffield said flatly. She raised a hand, with a ring on it. "I had protection against the wind and the lightning. Move your men and your non-fighters away from it. See if your golems and your earth mages can remove as many of the windstones from underneath it as possible. Accept that every living being within several hundred metres of it is to die when it destabilises. Something has sickened the windstones, and now they are no longer stable."

She paused, clearing her throat.

"In the lead box, on the table. I have found what did it. What I believe did it, but I am not knowing for certain. I will show you, so your men know what to look for, but else I will be taking it with me. I must go soon. There are things that I must do."

She was always like that. Cromwell sighed. Not a servant; barely an ally. She was not Albionese and seemed to neither care for nor understand the complexities of the political ramifications of actions. He would get no more out of her, despite the way his heart pounded in terror at what she had said. "What did you find?" he asked, mouth moving on autopilot.

"This," she said simply, flipping back the catch. The hinge swung back and the room was lit in acidic green, radiating out from the thumb-sized fragment of green-brown-blue crystal within. Cromwell stared at this terrible glow, before Sheffield slammed the box shut.

"W-what is that?" he asked.

"What? I am not knowing quite for certain," she said. "But I suspect. It was once a windstone. It is not one any more. It has absorbed tainted things, rather than just the magic of the wind, and the taint spreads from one windstone to the next, for it will not be content to be trapped and breaks down and corrodes everything it touches. That is why I keep it contained in lead, which I am finding seems to guard against its influence. This is of the nature of the things that have destabilised the windstones here, and poisoned the world-flows of the Pale Tower such that it will die."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The hoofbeats of her steed were muffled by the fog all around her. She had left the last village she had passed through almost half-an-hour ago, and she had seen no human presence since then. Louise looked around. Visibility was only around fifty metres along the winding path, but in a sense that mattered less. The dense foliage around her meant she couldn't even see that far to her left and right, and it muffled sound with uncanny prowess, leaving the woods cloyingly silent. There could be a small army waiting a stone's throw round the next corner and she wouldn't know it until she rode through the middle of them. The trees were strange to her, growing out of shallow pools and hillocks, their thick roots entwining and knotting around each other. The path itself was an old stone road which had clearly once been in better shape, but was now so worn and broken that she kept to it more because it was raised above the sodden ground than it was a paved surface.

There could be anything in those woods. Bears. Wolves. Dragons... well, probably not dragons. She'd hear a dragon. They were not exactly small creatures and in undergrowth this dense it wouldn't be able to move around easily. So she only had to worry about bears, wolves, bandits, murderers, muggers, treasonous Albionese Republicans waiting to kill or capture her, and other such commonplace things.

"_My lady,_" Marisalon said tersely. "_You are being ridiculous._"

"Well, maybe a little bit," Louise admitted. "I haven't seen anyone in ages."

"_Oh no,_" the neomah said. "_I mean, why are you worrying about a few wolves or bandits? You are more than well enough to hold off such a feeble threat._"

Louise licked her lips. "Well, they might kill my horse," she said, after some thought. "I don't have a spare and it's a fairly good steed." She patted it on the head; the horse flicked its ears back in response, but kept on plodding along. "Even if someone had a cart horse or something I could borrow, it wouldn't be trained. Its rider was a harquebusier, I think. But... no, she didn't have a harquebus. Maybe she wasn't the rider."

"You know," the sword on her back said, "this would probably be a lot more interesting if I could hear the other half of the conversation. Or maybe not. I mean, it doesn't sound like it's about stabbing enough to be really interesting. But do tell me if you start talking about stabbing, because I want to be part of that all important decision-making process. The cut-and-thrust of debate, if you will. Ah ha."

The girl considered telling the sword to shut up. She chose not to, only somewhat because she doubted that it would listen and she feared it would snigger at her. It had a very annoying snigger. But it tended to wake up for a while, and now that it was talking again, it wouldn't go dormant again for a while.

So instead she asked the question she had meant to ask it for a while. "Have you remembered your name yet?"

"Nope! You can call me 'Sword' for short!"

"_It makes you just want to drop it in a bath of pure vitriol for several weeks,_" Marisalon said drily. "_That's wasted on most people._"

Louise blinked. "Well..." she began, "how about you tell me more about yourself?" she said. She tried to ignore the strange feeling in her stomach. It was like the worst case of butterflies in her tummy ever. Except it wasn't a butterfly, it was a strange grasshopper-like bug-thing.

"Oh, that's just what the other you wanted to know," the sword said casually, "only, you know, she was asking about a lot more things and talking kind of like a spirit. I wasn't sure if she was a she at first because I've met no small number of spirit-ridden in my days, but she wasn't a spirit – or a ghost, either. I'd have seen if she was a ghost."

The girl shuddered, wincing slightly as the motion made her wounds ache. She hated these reminders of that dreadful gap in her memories filled with mad dreams where she had done... things. Where whoever was in control of her body had killed and maimed and... and had somehow managed to talk with the sword. "What… what could you tell about her?" she asked the sword, cautiously.

"Well, she certainly knew how to make a sword feel loved," the blade said. "A nice firm grip on the hilt, lovely blade-work, some masterful moves that even I haven't seen before. Snicker-snack! Just like that, and with a riposte a man's dead, without even the need to use any kinds of strange green glowy magic. Not that she was sparse with that. Does an old sword's blade good to watch men scream and die like that!"

Louise pursed her lips. "Anything more… _useful?_" she hinted, after a pause where the only noise was the horse's hooves. "About who she was or something like that?"

Birds sounded off in the trees. Possibly doves, although their cooing was muted by the mists.

"Beats me," the sword said, after time to think. "I mean, apart from her being some kind of terrible scary god-queen of ancient aeons who speaks an archaic language and seemed to believe that people were trying to kill her… well, I mean, a different lot of people than the ones who were trying to kill her because she was wearing you. But that much was obvious from the right-off, right?"

Louise slumped down on the horse. Yes. The fragments of memory she had from… she focussed on getting her thoughts in order… from remembering memories which weren't hers – which gave her even more of a headache than trying to parse that thought – _felt _like that was true.

"Oh," the sword said, "that reminds me! I have this feeling I used to know you. Only not. As in, I used to used to know you, but now I never have known you any more."

"That made no sense," Louise said flatly.

"Yeah, I know, and I was the one saying it. Look, if you want to explain the feeling that right now you would once have been having déjà vu, but you aren't right now, be my guest."

"How can I explain it when I don't understand what you're trying to tell me!" the girl snapped.

"And that's the boat I'm in," it said. "Well, I'm not on a boat, because I'm on a horse, but if I was on a boat, that would be the boat I would be in."

"_Yes, my princess. I can't help. Truly, it is because I am unfamiliar with your language and… okay, I can't even lie here. It just doesn't make sense. But then again, this is a murder-obsessed amnesiac sword which may or may not be the product of someone binding one of your spirits into a blade – given that he resembles certain uppity blades from the City where someone failed to properly dissolve the chalcanth – so perhaps we are fortunate he makes as much sense as he does,_" Marisalon drawled. "_Or perhaps unfortunate. It all depends on one's point of view._"

"I think I need food and a drink," Louise groaned. "Something strong."

"_Oh, very good idea, my fairest princess. You should work to keep the sesselja within you happy, for it will ravenously consume the alcohol from your very stomach. Well thought indeed._"

Wonderful. Just wonderful. So she couldn't even get drunk to take her mind off things.

Sobriety hit very hard when she found the body.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The man had been a woodsman. Possibly a forester, possibly a lumberjack… whatever peasants did in woods beyond poaching. Either way, he wouldn't be coming home today. Nor any other day.

Not when he had been strewn over a tree, intestines dangling like strange fleshy vines from a sodden pine, blackened skin sloughing off scorched flesh.

Louise clambered off her horse, keeping a firm grasp on its reins, and threw up into the undergrowth. There wasn't enough food in her stomach for that, so what she mostly got was stomach acid. Then the smell wafted in her direction, and she found something more to vomit.

Yes, she had seen bodies in a non-living state. Yes, she had been the one who had put a lot of those bodies in a non-living state. And yes, burns weren't pretty to look at… but this wasn't the kind of thing that any fire mage might do in the course of a normal fight. This had been deliberate. To prove a point.

"_It's not very artistic,_" Marisalon judged, critically. "_It's just sort of strewn about there._"

The girl ignored the neomah, and tried to stare at the scene before her without looking at it very closely. This proved to be impossible, and so she ended up staring past it, down the road, locked into morbid contemplation. "Who… what could do that?" she said hoarsely. "Orcs? They do eat children. And…"

No. She didn't want to look closer to see if the body had been eaten. Eaten by more than the ravens which sat upon it, cawing, their blue eyes watching her.

"_It could be a warning. Keep out. That would mean that people would be less likely to follow us in there,_" the voice in her head suggested.

'We also might find out what… what did that,' Louise thought back.

"_So?_"

"That would be bad, you stupid thing!" the girl blurted out. Her horse was restless; it didn't like being this close to the body either. She began to idly stroke the beast, trying to calm it down and prevent it from panicking.

"_Can you see a better way?_"

Hatefully, Marisalon was right. If she turned around, she would be heading in the wrong direction. She was fairly sure – not entirely, because the road among these trees was narrow and winding and quite unlike the one they had taken from New Castle across the swampland – but fairly sure she was headed in the right way to get to Saxe Gotha. And from there, she could head south to Port's Mouth, to the docks. That was the plan. It was a good one.

It hadn't taken into account eviscerated bodies.

Well, eviscerated bodies which hadn't got that way because they'd been traitors who had tried to stand in her way, that is. It had been entirely fine with those ones, especially if their deaths would prevent the treasonous Albionese Republicans from informing others of her location.

"I don't have to like it," she muttered. "And I'm not going to sleep until I'm out of these woods."

"_That would probably be a very good idea, my fair princess,_" Marisalon said solemnly. "_And…_" she paused, the entire tone of her voice shifting. "_Quiet!_" she hissed. "_I think someone's up ahead!_"

Louise's hand went to her sword. She could swear it pulsed under her grasp when she touched it, warming slightly. But she'd need to drop the horse's reins to fight, which meant that it would run, and if it ran she'd lose her mount and would have to trust that she could find a new one. And even if she took one from a farmer, it would be a farm horse, bred for pulling ploughs rather than speed.

So she mounted her steed first, keeping her hand ready to draw it. And indeed, soon she could just about make out the distant sound of hoofsteps on the path. The mists were clearing slightly and the sky above her had a hint of blue; Albion must have been rising again, above the cloud layer.

Emerging from the mists was a man riding a jittery-looking donkey, keeping a firm hand on the reins. He wore a hooded white robe; he bore no weapons save a wand which was tucked into his rope belt. A Brimiric gladiform hung around his neck.

Louise relaxed slightly. It was just a priest – a noble one, too, or at least a mage. Of course, from what she had heard Cromwell was 'just' a priest too… wasn't it funny that she had never seen the man in person? She rather doubted that this was the leader of the Albionese Reclamation, though he might give her away to soldiers if there were any in the area. If he said that there was a girl who couldn't speak Albionese wearing a Republican uniform making her way through the woods…

… no. No. She wasn't going to kill a priest just because he _might _give her away, when he had done her no harm nor offered her threat. She was a faithful daughter of the Church, and she simply would not, did not, could not do such things.

A chill ran down the back of Louise's neck as she thought about how the past few months had changed her. She had seriously been following a chain of thought which would have had her killing a priest. That was horrifying.

While she had been frozen, the priest had drawn closer, and, noticing her, pulled down his hood. The man's skin was pale; his hair white despite his youth and unwrinkled visage. His irises were a peculiar grey so pale the only hint of shade in his face were his pupils, which stood out like lumps of coal upon a fresh field of snow. Louise had only seen one like him before; the albino daughter of the marquis de Vaanderveld, and even she had more colour to him than this monochrome man.

He called out to her, in what she now recognised as a greeting in Albionese.

"Greetings, reverend," she called back in her best Church Romalian. She was taking a risk, but as long as the clergyman could converse in the language of the Church, she might avoid having to speak to him in Albionese. At least that way even if he reported that there was a foreigner, he wouldn't be able to say she was Tristainian. "C-can you help me get this poor man down?"

The pale man's face wrinkled up in disgust. "We are too close to Mortlake here," he said, in somewhat archaic Church Romalian. He sounded like he had learned the formal version, possibly from books, without having heard many people speak it. "The spirits meddle in the affairs of men, commoners and nobles alike go mad when they go too long without seeing the sun, the dead sleep unquietly, and some poor souls eat the flesh of men when crops fail and lose themselves. I know of far too many bodies, girl. You should not touch it; the eaters will get angered by that."

"The eaters?" Louise echoed.

"They crawl out of Mortlake," the albino said. "Righteous people should not know too much about them, for they are spirits." He looked her up and down, clearly judging her. His nostrils flared, and he tilted his head at her. "You should come back with me, back to my church," he said. "Something has the eaters agitated. Let us away from this… wretched place. I will come take the body down later, in the morning when I have prepared the proper things. I seldom see people in my exile out here." His face darkened. "Save like this," he added. "And you look like you could use a meal… what are you doing out here, dressed in such a strange way?"

Louise paused, her hand unconsciously going to her blade. It could be a trap. It could very well be a trap. But the man had… did he not recognise the Republican uniform? An exile? A priest living alone in the woods who had missed most of the war? That seemed far too much like good luck for her, but… stranger things had happened. And she wanted to know more about the 'eaters' that he had mentioned, and what they were to leave a man in such a state.

Even if it was a trap, it was unlikely that even a mage, like this man, could really ambush her, and she'd already had to take care of what she ate for months. She wouldn't be caught by drugged food. An extra day, especially when if needs be she could take it from his pantry if he did turn out to be treacherous, would be an annoyance but… she was willing to risk it. And a proper meal sounded wonderful.

"Lead the way, reverend," she said, bowing in her saddle.

It was almost half an hour's ride to the place the man had mentioned, and he kept his donkey at a fair trot. Louise's horse was tired, and she had to push it more than she would have liked to keep up with him. It would need a good feed and a rub down when she unsaddled it, because if she had to leave in a hurry she didn't want an exhausted mount.

"Reverend," she said to the albino, pulling her horse up alongside him, "what are those… those 'eaters' that you mentioned?"

"I would rather not talk of them out here," he said, eyes on the wood rather than her. "But… you are a Tristic, yes? From Tristain?." He switched to using her language, although his accent was archaic. "The voice is noticeable when you speak the language of the Church. It is little surprise you do not know of the dangers in these woods. If someone guided you here, I hope you did not pay them for the advice."

Louise considered what to say. She settled for saying, "Yes, I am from Tristain. I thought this would be a faster way to get down to the south coast, to a port. South Hampton, perhaps, or Port's Mouth, or even Brighthelmstone."

The priest snorted. "Girl, you are north of Londinium right now. You are headed in the wrong way."

"Oh," Louise said.

"Now, please, be quiet," he said. "I must listen in these woods, when they are as agitated as they are right now."

The girl nodded, and was silent for the rest of the way. Her chest ached with the dull pain of a closing wound as the thing inside her worked at knitting the bullet holes back together from the inside out, and Marisalon tried her best to distract her with tales of the city and of its denizens. It was reassuring in its own way, because it helped demonstrate that those creature were not spirits. Spirits, as all men knew, dwelt unseen among the world, in its hidden places. Lake spirits lived at the bottom of lakes, forest spirits in the deepest, darkest parts of forests, and other such things – for men and spirit were not meant to interact. By contrast, the creatures of the City, much as it was horrifying to find out that there was an entire race of Marisalons…

"_Oh, please, no. I'm an exceptional specimen of one,_" the neomah said wickedly.

… at least it was different from spirits. They were… outsiders, creatures from beyond the stars, and that meant it was probably just fine to interact with them. And so she wouldn't have to tell this priest what she was doing so she could have a clean conscience.

That made perfect sense.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The mists were clearing, revealing a hazy blue sky with scattered white clouds, by the time they reached the clergyman's residence. The last distance had been along a one-man track through overgrown woods, leading up a raised mound in the sodden forest. Looking back from the peak – insofar as such a concept applied to such a dreadfully flat place – she could see the crowded trees up the gentle incline which led towards the smoke-pall of Londinium.

The priest's shrine chapel was something which clearly had been meant for a larger community. She could see the remnants of rotted wooden structures and roofless structures around it. This had been a hamlet, even a village a few decades ago; now all that was left was the church and the few buildings around it which showed some sign of maintenance. And even when she looked at the chapel itself, the roof – which clearly had cost whatever noble had built it howsoever many years ago a fair amount – had fallen in, exposing the nave to the elements and leaving the building looking uncannily like a caved-in ribcage.

Or perhaps that was just her and the morbid streak she seemed to have acquired at some point.

The area had clearly been cut back recently, and there were piles of wood which looked like they had been torn off strangely-scarred trees. She sniffed; there was an... odd scent in the air. Slightly familiar. She'd smelt it before, but she couldn't quite place it. Not the scent of blood, or the one of wet rot; those were both distressingly familiar. Something... sharp underneath everything else, almost baked in to the environment. It was her normal sense of smell picking it up, too; not something magical.

Where did she know it from?

"You can tie your horse up in the yard here," the priest said, seeing to his own donkey. "There are a few hamlets around here who drop off food and the like when they can afford it, so I have spare oats."

Louise thanked him, as she rubbed her horse down with the blanket. She really was pushing it too hard; if she could stay here for a few days, she could give the mare the rest it really needed. The beast was shaking under her hands, edgy and nervous. The ride up the hill had taken a lot out of it. But she was too cautious, too suspicious to commit to such a rest, not yet.

Following the man into the intact dwelling in this ruined hamelt, Louise found that this place was where the man had been focussing his maintenance. It was a warm and surprisingly spacious place, tarred from the inside against the mist and then with interior walls between the tarred stone and the room itself. The man bustled over to the fireplace, and poked at the stacked logs with his wand until they caught fire. Louise found that welcome, and immediately went to aid with the fire and warm herself. It was pleasant in this dark, warm place. Even if the strange smell was stronger here.

"I actually extended into what had been an old winery," the albino said in answer to her questioning glance. "I do not mind the vinegary smell; I am used to it and it keeps insects out. But I am sorry, I have not introduced myself. I am William, formerly of Maidenhythe. Now I am a priest and I hold no noble title."

Louise cocked her head at the chime of truth, and relaxed a little. He wasn't lying about his name. "And I am Marie-Anne de Militare, of the de Militare _inexprimé_house," she said, crossing her fingers behind her back.

"I'm sorry, but… I am not fully knowing how you Tristics do things," he said. "Those are your families which are not made up of mages? That is, not entirely made of mages. There are some mages?"

"Yes," Louise said. "I'm…" she swallowed. This was hard to say. "I'm not one," she said. Which was truthful, but it wasn't _right_. In her heart, she knew she was a mage. Her parents were mages, her sisters were mages, and she had _used _to be one. Just… she had been a clumsy, not very good one, who couldn't manage proper spells. But she had still been one! And even if she wasn't quite one any more, she still _thought _like a mage and acted like one!

She distinctly thought she heard a snicker from Marisalon, but she ignored it. She was just too happy to have warm hands.

"I'll just go put the kettle on," called out the priest, from a small annex off the main room. "How much honey would you like in your rosensalt?"

Louise blinked. "Excuse me?" she asked.

"Oh, you have not drunk it? It is…" he poked his pale face back in, while he searched for words, before falling back into Church Romalian. "It is rosemary infused in water, with a slight pinch of salt, and then honey added to taste." He returned to Low Tristainian. "I always have quite a lot; I keep bees, you know. Couldn't live without honey for my drinks. And I brew some mead, too. But alas! I have run out."

Louise swallowed. That sounded… unpleasant. "Yes, quite sweet please, reverend," she said quickly. "And please… uh, do not overdo the salt."

"I might have some dried blackcurrants left over from last autumn to add to it, while it steeps," he added, as if confiding a great secret.

"Yes, thank you," the girl said, looking around the room now that her hands felt warmer. He gave her a fired-clay cup, and she sniffed it suspiciously. It smelt… strongly of rosemary. And then she took a sip, and tried very hard not to spit it out. Clearly the Albionese lost all sense of taste from drinking things made of dried plant dropped in boiled water.

But… she needed the sugar. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to down it in one gulp, and sat back, enjoying the feeling of warmth in her stomach. She considered whether it would be respectable to take her boots off and try to dry her itchy coarse leggings, but decided against it for the moment. Instead, she busied herself with trying to work out what kind of man this clergyman was by the contents of the room.

Certainly, there were a lot of books here. That was her first and foremost impression. Old, leatherbound books with faded lettering on them. Some looked like religious texts, tales of the life of Brimir and the like. Others… she drifted over to one of the tables, and her eyes widened in surprise at the pictures. There was a picture of a human arm, the carefully drawn muscles incredibly detailed.

"They are very good, are not they?" asked the man from behind her, and Louise jumped. She hadn't heard him. "These books are my joy and my pride."

Louise went to tuck a lock of hair back behind one ear, and only remembered that she had cut it when her hand failed to touch it. "Are… they from the chapel here, before it was ruined?" she asked, looking around. There was a worn bust of a woman, a silvery necklace draped over it, in the corner. Next to it was what looked like one of the cavalryman sabres the New Model Army riders had used, propped up against yet another book case. This book case, however, had a collection of windstones, held up in little wire contraptions which made them almost look like they were floating on their own.

"No, they are not from the chapel," the man said slowly, and sighed. "Can you help me mash the vegetables, now you have warmed up? It will be done much faster."

Louise was quickly left staring down in bemusement at turnips, knife in hand. She was meant to… cut them into chunks, and then grind them up. Well, that seemed simple enough. She just had to resist the urge to use green fire on the surprisingly hard tubers. "So… if you don't mind me asking, where are the books from?" she asked. "That book on anatomy was beautiful from the pictures."

"Ah, well," the priest William said, squatting down by the blackened cauldron which sat on the hearth, "that is a long and sad story. You do not want to hear it in full, or, rather, I do not want to tell it." He sighed again. "But suffice to say, I was one of the friends of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha before the king went after him, and this place is another exile for me. Every time I try to settle down, it always seems that I end up cast out again. And the king," he shot a glance over his shoulder at Louise, "… well, people told him that the duke was consorting with spirits, rhyme dragons, elves, whatever one cared to mention, and he – even by that point – was in great argument with the Desbattion over the taxes that they refused to collect for him. So an excuse to take down the Saxe-Gotha line and seize their lands was most welcome for him."

"I… had heard that it had somehow been related to the start of the Albionese Civil War," Louise said cautiously. She focussed on the sliced up turnip before her. She had to cut it again and again, and then use that mallet-thing on it? That seemed like an awful lot of work. Maybe if she just hit it twice as hard, it would take half the work. "But… well, the sin of Protestantism might be plausible, but rhyme dragons and elves?" She shook her head sadly, at how the Prince and Princess had suffered for the stupidity of their father, and then brought the mashing hammer down on the turnip.

The priest half-turned at the thump from Louise and her satisfied grunt, but then returned to what he was doing. "The king went after the duke for his lands to fund the shortcomings from how the Desbattion would not cooperate, and his friends and allies were targeted too. I had only married into the Maidenhythes, and my wife died – and they wanted rid of me, because they feared losing their lands. So…" he shrugged, "here I am. But I took what books of the duke which I could save from the fires with me. They have served me well against the things out here."

"I see," Louise said, imagining that the new turnip before her was Sheffield. Smiling to herself, she began to peel it. This was rather fun, wasn't it? "So…" she said, "the books tell you what the… what killed that man?"

There was a clatter of the poker as the man dropped it. "Not exactly," he said, warily. "I… have had to resort to folk tales and the like to learn what I have gathered. And it is patchy. The books are not… that valuable."

That was a lie, Louise noted, her hackles rising, before she forced herself to calm down and took the knife out of the turnip. The dissonance in her mind had been of the whole thing, and the books were clearly expensive. Carefully, she put down the knife, and turned around, folding her arms and staring at the man. "Tell me," she said, letting a slight hint of her natural nobility seep through. "I want to know what killed that man. As a priest, it is your duty and your obligation to assist in such matters; after all, did not the Founder Brimir say that to let another unknowingly pass into peril leaves one's complicit in their fate?"

The neomah in her head made an amused noise. "_I wonder if you have a similar saying about the people that can quote doctrine,_" she said whimsically.

There was silence for a while. "Long ago," the man said, "there was a great battle over this entire area of the country. That much is clear; you can still find the bones and the weapons. But it was not truly a battle. Not really. It was a massacre. And at the end, after the killing spells and the hungry magics had faded, the victors took the bodies of the defeated and piled them in a chasm in the earth, and burned them. And when the chasm flooded, that was what made Mortlake."

"That doesn't answer what did it," Louise said, flatly, drawing in a deep breath

The man said nothing.

"Tell me," Louise said, squaring her jaw. "Please," she added.

"Since then," the albino priest said, reluctantly, "things have crawled out of Mortlake and infested the surrounding countryside, especially these woods. The death drove the spirits mad, and the woods want blood. Some bodies I find are done by the things from Mortlake; others? There are peasants here who make sacrifices in the manner of the ancient cults before the Brimiric faith." He looked her square in the eye and glared. "I would rather not have talked about that," he said, "especially so soon before dinner."

The girl shuffled, slightly embarrassed, but met his gaze. "I wanted to know," she said.

"Well, in that case," the priest said, glowering, "would you _please _go and fetch some water from the well. It's in the courtyard where the mounts are. I think I will be able to finish the rest of dinner without you, thank you."

The meal was indeed an awkward affair, with the priest wary and recalcitrant, and Louise too hungry to spend the time she would have needed to keep a proper conversation going. He asked her things about what she was doing in Albion; she lied. He showed a remarkable lack of knowledge about the state of the Albionese Civil War, and indeed that there was one; he was so ignorant that Louise spared time from her food to explain in suitable terms the treachery and maliciousness of the Republicans, and barely managed to avoid going into a lecture about how wicked they were for how they had treated Princess Sophia. The food was plain, although adequate – though once she would have turned her nose up at such a bland state of affairs – and once she had finished, she did not linger.

And so Louise found herself in the ruined church, staring up at the evening sky. It was an oddly calm moment, despite the knowledge that out there, the New Model Army was hunting her and without the fog, she could be seen from the air. She really should be hoping that Albion descended once more back into the cloud layer, but as it stood she was so glad to see the sun again that she did not care.

There was nostalgia there, too, as she leant against a ruined wall. The crumbling mortar left its dandruff against her buff jacket. Yes, there had been another ruined church, back on the day with the earth wyrm on the way to La Rochelle. It seemed like it had been years ago, instead of merely months. Men had died that day; griffin knights and… and she couldn't even remember their names. Nor the names of the men in the desperate flight to the windship from the pursuing Dragonblooded.

When she got back to Tristain, she would need to talk to Princess Henrietta about them. Her friend _had _to know that there was such a foe hidden within her kingdom. Treacherous, murderous vipers who betrayed their liegelords with the same tactics that once they had fought the Creators-of-All and… Louise shook her head, shaking the foggy memories of the Other Woman from her head.

It had been far too much to hope that the memories might have been burned out by her madness. And they hadn't. Well, that stood at its own warning. Louise pursed her lips, mouth a thin line. She had lost control when she had been calling so heavily on those memories which were not hers, to desperately fight for her life. She had reached out for any power she could accept, regardless of the consequences… and so she had lost herself. That was something to fear.

There was an embarrassed cough from Marisalon. "_Just as a thought, and please do not expose me to your imperious radiance,_" she began.

"You're going to say something you think will anger me," Louise muttered. "You always get more elaborate with your praise when you think you're going to anger me."

Marisalon sniggered. "_Perhaps,_" she admitted. "_And look at you, actually reading a situation rather than charging on through or desperately accepting any praise that comes to you…_"

"Get to the point."

"_Well, yes. You would have died had… had the thing in your head not taken over,_" Marisalon said with no more preamble. "_If it's die or… that, I would prefer that it happen again. Even if it's terrifying for me._"

Louise sunk further down, hugging her knees. "I… I don't want to die," she whispered. "But to die as someone who isn't me… what happens to my soul then? Do… do I just get destroyed, and it's _her _who ascends to the heavens and passes to the sun, to have her sins burned from her? If I die when I'm not me, am I gone… forever? Will my parents find me missing when they, in time, die? Or if Cattleya wanders off again and drowns? Am… am I playing with more than just my body?"

"_I don't know,_" the neomah said, helpfully. "_But death is death, and speaking as something which lives – or lived, perhaps – as something which endured until something ended me… well, as long as the faith of my cultists didn't bring me back… well, speaking as one of those things, death is the end._"

"Oh." Louise stared up at the blue sky. "I… I'm sorry for you," she said, softly. "If… if things are set up such that you just… stop existing when you die, that's… wrong."

"_It's the way things are,_" the neomah said. "_Well, they were. Now, like this, in your head… I don't even know. Maybe if you get born again like humans where I come from do, a bit of me lives on in the new you._"

The girl managed a weak chuckle, and stretched out her legs, because the sesselja in her leg was making her calves cramp. 'If that's true,' she thought, 'we really are stuck together.'

"_There are worse heads to be in,_" Marisalon said.

There was a long, comfortable pause in the warmth of the late spring, or possibly early summer sunlight.

"_So, when he's asleep, want to see what he's hiding in those books?_" the neomah suggested wickedly.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Outside, the wind howled. The moon Dorika was only a sliver in the sky, peaking through high up clouds. And within the one intact house in a ruined village, Louise de la Vallière carefully eased open one of the books, trying her best to stop the spine from making a noise. The priest was already asleep, slumbering in his chambers, and she would prefer it if he stayed that way.

"_What do we have here?_" Marisalon asked.

'It's the Prophecies of Aegis III, one of the early popes,' Louise thought, flicking through. 'He gave himself up to the grace of God and uttered divine words for five years and five days, before his voice gave out.' She paused. 'I heard Eleanore say that… that it's possible he was just insane, but I don't believe that,' she said. 'That would mean the church was lying or mistaken, and both things cannot be. Sometimes I worry about my sister. She's a little too disrespectful towards our Holy Mother.'

"_So… nothing salacious or suspicious,_" the neomah said, sounding disappointed.

'No, it's perfectly normal for a clergyman to have a copy of… wait, "salicious"?' Louise thought.

"_Hah! You just guiltily thought about the fact that there are certain bits of your prophecy which aren't something a proper young lady should be reading, but you read them anyway,_" Marisalon crowed.

'… shut up.' Louise picked up the next book. And her eyes widened. The writing here was not the standard Brimiric script. Nor was it the runes which predated them. But it was familiar nonetheless.

"_Well, well, well,_" the neomah in her head said smugly, "_I can read this. The characters are similar… not quite the same – they're simplified – to those of the First Language. And isn't that interesting?_" She coughed. "_Of course, I – while I do not chide you – might point out that if you had not spent quite so much time moping while imprisoned, you too might be able to read it._"

'I think I can sort of recognise the characters,' Louise thought, sulkily. 'That one, for example, is "da". I think. And the next one is 'mo'.'

"_And that means?_"

'… shut up, you stupid thing. Just read it to me.'

"_Fine, fine._" The neomah cleared her throat – despite being a bodiless voice – and began, "_In a time which was once, but is no more,_" Marisalon narrated, "_the people who lived here were not as they were now. They built their towers of white stone all across Uropa… that's what I think they called Albion, although there's also a mention of 'Baritania'… from context, I think that's a region of Uropa. They studied the music of the celestial spheres and they listened to the stars; they consorted with the children of the moons and they worshipped the dragons. Not as gods like how the modern men worship, no; the dragons were to be feared for their power and knowledge and wisdom and dominion over the spirits, but they could be bargained with. They held vast harvest festivals for their lords, giving them the best food and drink and sweet, sweet honeyed mead. And in return, the dragons would charm the weathers with poetry and song into giving good weather for the next year._"

The neomah sighed. "_My goodness,_" she said, "_this is badly written. I'm somewhat paraphrasing here because their grasp of the First Language is… substandard. There's so many grammatical mistakes here. And I'm guessing at a few words which I don't recognise._"

'I can do without the editorialising,' Louise thought snippishly. 'Well, I knew the barbarians who were conquered and became the commoners worshipped things like dragons and spirits and the like, because they were ignorant savages.'

"_Ignorant savages who apparently built some fairly impressive things,_" Marisalon pointed out. "_Doesn't 'towers of white stone' sound like the Pale Tower in Londinium._"

'Just because they built things doesn't make them not barbarians,' the girl mentally retorted. 'Carry on.'

"_Now, it should not be said that this was perfection. Many humans feared or were jealous of their dragon lord, and they were lax in their worship; the dragons punished them for their actions. But the north was faithful and obedient compared to the more lax worshippers in the east and south-west, and this was often a source of war between the city-states – not helped when dragon patrons would play these places against each other as an extension of their own conflicts._"

Marisalon snorted. "_Oh, most amusing. Rather acid-washed, I think. Let's just corrode away the patina, and hope that this doesn't give away that the dragons were clearly hopelessly territorialised and divided._"

'You think so?'

"_Oh yes. Very much so, my princesses. Look at this; they even admit there was division. Therefore, we can assume that everything was in practice far worse, from the tone of these stories. Most amusing. Just flip through ahead a bit._"

Louise followed the neomah's instructions, listening to her head-familiar's muttering as they read on.

"_Okay, I have more. Then strangers came from the south. Large-eyed and pale-faced, their eyes and hair in all the colours of the rainbow and… uh, they cared not for the dragons nor for the men and women who worshipped them. All across the north, cities burned. The strangers bore magics only seen amongst the children the dragons sired on mortal women – it says, 'for the children men gave to dragons who took human shape were not human, for all that they may have looked it' – and even the dragons could not stand against them. The dragon lords were never great in number, not compared to their mindless chattel which they would unleash upon their foes, but even the chattel were overwhelmed by the children of the rainbow. Your ancestors, I think._" And then Marisalon fell silent.

"Continue," Louise whispered.

"_The priest,_" she said, voice low and intense. "_I heard a creak._"

'Maybe it was…'

"_No, it was the noise of someone trying not to make any noise. Trust me on this._"

When the albino snuck into his main room, placing his feet with deliberate precision, he found the girl he had taken in waiting for him, sword in hand. Her eyes flared green in the low light.

Almost reflexively – and wasn't it strange how she was getting used to the sensation of using reflexes she'd never known she had before? – she opened the unseen-yet-seeing third eye on her forehead, taking in the spirits which flocked around this fake priest like midges around cattle. There were so many of them that she could barely see him through her third eye.

"You're not human," she said, bluntly.

Blearily, the man rubbed his eyes. "I could say the same for you," he said, tilting his head a little further than comfortable. "Neither are you a mage." He sniffed, nostrils flaring. "You smell wrong. You don't have a smell. Just… the places you have been. You smell of swamp and blood and brass and something sharp and acidic; there's no sweat, no piss, no shit. What are you, some constructed doll animated by the wicked sorceries of the magekin?" He bared his teeth, which were suddenly a little too long, too sharp. "Are you one of the creatures of Chainer-Of-Minds?"

"I see your Tristainian has improved suddenly," Louise said, glaring.

The albino harrumphed. "All your human languages are simple things," he said. "So… what are you going to do now, Marie-Anne de Militare?" he asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"It depends on what you do," Louise retorted. "You were the one who strung the body up like that and you were going to do the same to me."

"No, I was just going to eat you at first," the not-man said candidly. His bones clicked as his skeleton shifted, and his strange pale eyes now stared at the world with slitted pupils. "If you want to go wandering around in this place with the Mortlake creatures, be my guest. But if you really want to die that much, you could just let me eat you. Which I decided not to, after seeing you more closely. You're not a spirit-kin, oh no, you're not. And you're certainly not a bastard-mage."

The thing gestured, and a chair slid across the room, placing itself for him to sit down. He nodded to Louise, who reluctantly lowered her weapon. "You know what I am, of course," he said.

"A rhyme dragon," Louise said. "Your books were written from their viewpoint. And those things you said, and the things in the books… the Duke de Saxe-Gotha was a member of the dragon-cults the books mentioned."

"Oh, very interesting," the dragon said, smirking. "So you can read the language of the spirits. I wonder where you learned that; humans never spoke it well, save for the bastardised version the elves taught their slaves, and that never had a written form."

"_I think he's the one who is mistaken,_" Marisalon said archly. "_Although considering how atrocious the grammar was in his books, perhaps he speaks some bastardised version of the first tongue which humans can't speak well._"

"I learned it from places," Louise said, ignoring the voice in her head and its muttered comments about how she was just having it read to her.

The dragon stretched, pale skin catching the pale moonlight creeping in through the shuttered windows. "Fascinating, fascinating," he said, adding something in a harsh-yet-lyrical language.

"_That would be a rhyming poem. Done crudely,_" Marisalon sniffed. "_I wonder what his singing voice is like._"

"I might as well 'put my cards on the table', as you might put it," he continued. "I no longer mean you any harm. You're too… interesting to eat."

Louise glowered. It sounded like he was mocking her.

"So… I feel neither of us wants to fight, and neither of us wants the attention of the Republicans," he continued, "so I think we could best come to a mutual arrangement. In the morning, you can leave. I will direct you to the ruins of Verlamion; it is a hard day's travel away, but is a fairly safe place from the creatures of Mortlake - though that vile infected place taints all that it touches. From there, it is only another day out of these woods, and from there, you can take the Pilsbury Way, which leads down to the old capital of Oramsarbour, and from there you can reach South Hampton or Port's Mouth, easily."

"What do you want in return?" Louise shot back.

The albino smiled, lips curling up far too far. "Your silence about my presence here; I would really rather not be hunted by mage-knights. And I or one of my relatives might call on you for a similar level of aid I have given you if we are in danger and need to escape from some threat."

The girl considered it. "That's fair enough," she said, cautiously. "Fine, then."

"Then you can stop skulking around in my library and, please, go to bed. You will have a hard day's travel ahead of you."

"I don't sleep," Louise admitted. "I'd rather read."

"Then," the dragon said, turning on his heel and returning to bed, "please keep the noise down for those of us who do."

* * *

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	21. 20: The Gathering Storm

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 20: The Gathering Tempest**

* * *

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* * *

It was just before dawn when the Pale Tower met its end.

With a dreadful rumbling, the entire fortress gave way. The tower sunk down into the earth, as if it was a pebble thrown into quicksand. The seamless stone cracked and tore, and in its tearing vast bolts of lightning lashed out, licking the sky. A sharp, stinking wind blew from the sagging citadel, lashing through the streets of Londinium with cold and bitter teeth. It tore shutters from buildings and swept the layered detritus of human life from the streets, plastering it wheresoever it blew. Thunder shattered the air, and the ground rumbled and shuddered like the hide of a wounded beast.

This was the harbinger of what was to come.

From the lightning-crackling morass where once the tower had emerged from the earth, a vile greenish-brown light began to shine, painting the smog in bilious hues. Around the sinkhole, more land began to sag and succumb, buildings and roads alike crumbling as their foundations dissolved. Those who were awake at this early hour tried to flee on ground barely more stable than water , but too many were asleep and they were devoured by the maw of the earth.

Clouds hung heavy over the place the tower had stood, unnatural in their yellows and greens – the colour of a livid bruise. It began to rain, but the rain itself was tainted; blood fell from the skies, hissing as it ate into the roofs of the city below. The streets of ancient Londinium were scoured clean for the first time in centuries. All the filth and excreta was eaten away by the sleeting, corrosive gore which burned the cobbles and etched its way through slate roofs. Those who were outside trying to flee the sinkhole were exposed to the full, unnatural fury of the tainted elements.

When the sun rose, it rose over a plagued city, smeared with hissing ichor. Where once one of the great landmarks of the city had stood, a weeping architectural sore seeped corrosive pus. The ruins of the pale tower barely broke the surface of the bilious green liquid which half-filled the crater. And around the rim of the sinkhole, tiny green-black-brown crystals the size of a man's little fingernail grew.

* * *

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* * *

The sun was still higher in the sky than Louise had expected by the time she reached the ancient bridge the dragon had told her about. She had made good time, she thought, as she looked across it. It had been abandoned long enough that the white stone which seemed to be a mark of the ancient dragon-cultists was covered in old growth. There was even a tree growing on the bridge over which had once been a river, but was now a standing lake.

She could barely contain her growing excitement at the sight of this landmark. If all went as planned tonight, then Marisalon would lead her through another beckoning ritual tonight, and she would have something which could get her off this stupid sodden flying island and heading back home. The dragon had – with some bemusement – managed to find a few of the ritual components the neomah had suggested might allow her to summon something called an agata, which was apparently a flying creature of the City , and that would be able to get her out of here.

Dismounting, she led her steed past the ruined walls, worn by the years. Time had not removed all signs that the walls had not fallen peacefully, though; she could still pick out the bits where the stone had run like molten wax, and where discarded golems stood, fused with the stone which they had been summoned with.

"We burned this city," she said to herself, softly. "Six hundred years ago. I wonder why no one settled here afterwards. I mean, Londinium seemed to be built around and over the ruins of another one of their cities. You'd think there might be at least… bandits, I guess. Or orcs, or something like that."

"_You don't know there aren't such things living here,_" Marisalon pointed out, "_quite apart from the creatures of that Mortlake place the dragon was so taciturn about. Oh, and it's quite possible he just ate bandits who set up camp here._"

That was a good point, well made, Louise conceded, drawing her sword and opening the invisible third eye on her forehead to watch for spirits. There were several , she saw, skulking around the ruins and wandering aimlessly between the shattered walls, ignoring her as she walked among the fallen stones and layers of detritus which six hundred years of entropy had wrought on this city. And it had once been a great city; she could tell that. It was larger than the inner city of Bruxelles, built on the river-isle, though it was certainly smaller than the main city, let alone the sprawl outside its walls.

The creatures of Mortlake were akin to spirits, the dragon had said, driven mad by the spiritual pollution of the slaughter. They mostly avoided this place. Had they once been the guardians of such cities; had the Albionese, succumbing to the heresy of Protestantism, worshipped and entreated with them to lend them their magics?

She ran a hand over a moss-covered, weather-worn stump which had once been a statue. How had they made their stones like this, fitting so tightly together, without earth mages? True, it was still worse than what a mage might do, for mages who specialised in construction could make stone flow like honey to form seamless, solid structures, but it put the abodes of the peasantry to shame.

Visions and whispers haunted her way as she led her horse on foot, looking for a place for it to graze. So many ruined towns. So many burned cities.

"Get out of my head," she whispered. If she could banish these memories that were not hers, these sunlit ruins, then she would. But her own mind refused to obey her, and so she drowned in nostalgia that was not hers, déjà vu born of another.

There was a wide lake a little further past the shattered shells of broken buildings, the eastern corners of which had consumed parts of the ruins. Grass was the only carpet in these long-abandoned halls. Crumbling white stone covered in mosses stood forlornly in the water, barely distinguishable from the dead trees which stood around them. Dark shapes moved in the water, flashing silver in the low light.

Louise perked up. She had this sudden hunger for fish. Yes, maybe she could see if she could catch one – or more than one – once she had taken care of her horse. Catch some fish and get a fire going; that'd be something worth doing. And she could look towards drying out her clothes. Catching fish couldn't be that hard, if commoners managed it.

"_The little things in life always help,_" Marisalon observed wryly, as she tied the horse to a sapling where it would have plenty of grass and water. Carefully, she unloaded the saddlebag filled with things that, on Marisalon's advice, she requested that the dragon give her, and put it somewhere safe. There was a mostly-intact structure close to the lake, where the plants had closed over to form a half-roof. That looked like a good place to camp.

Wearing just the mostly-unfastened buff jacket, Louise huddled close to the fire – such as it was. Periodically, green fire flared amongst the smoky orange as she bolstered its damp smouldering. "Come on, come on," she ordered it, "just dry out. Stay alight!" She had surrounded it with what wood she could find, so hopefully once it was alight it would dry out the other wood and it wouldn't require her constant attention, but for now, she was fighting this cursed dampness.

"I don't suppose you have the magical ability to make fire, sword?" she asked the weapon, resting against a wall. "Something useful like that?"

"Nope," it told her cheerfully. "Well, sort of. Maybe. I mean, when people hurl fire magic at me, I can eat it and catch on fire for a while, but not normally. I'm a sword, lady, and so what I do is stabbing, cutting..."

Its list was interrupted by its yelp, as Louise grabbed it and punched the flat of the old, corroded sword. Green flared around her fist, to be drawn into the blade which ignited in a brilliant green inferno. In one motion, the girl stabbed it deep into the wet soil of her firepit, through the centre of a smouldering log. There was a crackle and a rush as the log ignited.

"_My dear princess, you always have such amusingly direct ways of approaching problems,_" Marisalon quipped. The girl could feel the bodiless neomah smiling.

"That felt odd," Louise said slowly as she leant back, working her fingers. "Like you were... sucking it in." She cocked her head. "I suppose it makes sense. I've heard of magic-eating swords before, but they're dreadfully rare."

"And your magic is strange, lady," her sword retorted, a pillar of green fire rising out of the smoky fire. "Give a chap a warning, would you? And I don't think this is a respectful use of me! I'm a sword, not a tinderbox."

"I stabbed that log, didn't I?"

"It's not alive! I mean, apart from the beetles living in it, who are definitely dead now, but they're not much. We should go find something better to cut up. Your magic is strange and even if I've had meals off you that even my old partner... you know, your lover-boy... couldn't give me, it tastes wrong!"

"You can stay there until the fire takes properly," Louise told it firmly, checking the positioning of her logs and moving where she had hung her underthings so they'd dry out quickly. She was _not _blushing bright-red at the mention of Viscount Wardes, and she was... she was just going out to find more wood. She certainly wasn't running away from that impudent sword. She was... yes, she was going to use the knife she'd acquired to go fishing in the lake. And if she couldn't do that, she could at least bathe in it because it looked fairly clean compared to most of the swamp. She needed a wash. She felt dirty. Unclean.

Admittedly, as she had spent most of the past few days trudging through swamps and had bled over herself quite a bit, she really was fairly filthy and the uncleanliness was not just a convoluted metaphor for some kind of inner discomfort. She was absolutely positive about that. Certainly.

She had all the inner discomfort she could ask for from her wounds, anyway.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The grasses were chill and damp beneath her bare feet and against her legs as she picked her way through them. Mud squelched between her toes. Despite that, she felt freer than she had in… well, since that last night in New Castle. She wasn't imprisoned, and for the first time since her escape she was not in too much pain. She had eaten a good meal last night, and a tolerable breakfast and lunch. When was the last time she had done that? Again, back in New Castle. Founder, that seemed like years ago, she thought, as she found a dry rock beside the water and sat on it, dangling her feet into the cold water.

Not that it felt very cold. She intellectually knew it was chilly, but that was just a thing about it, like the knowledge it was in Albion. It wasn't a fundamental property of the water, like… like its wetness.

The sesselja squirmed in her gut, and she winced at the noise. It wasn't a dignified noise. Though it did remind her she was hungry. Again. It was funny how the body started demanding food so quickly. Almost rather rude of it, really. It should just do what her mind told it to, not get uppity!

Louise giggled to herself, at her own ridiculousness, and lay back on the rock, basking in the warmth of the late afternoon sunlight. Sunlight. Real, actual, sunlight. She… hadn't realised how much she had missed it.

_warm arms above her, warm arms at her side, and the heat of the sun itself pressed up against her, caressing, touching, feeling…_

The girl sat straight up, blushing furiously. What had _that _daydream been about?

"_Wha-?_" Marisalon said groggily. "_What did I miss? I was trying to make sure we had everything for the summoning tonight, making sure I remembered everything you need to do._"

"Never you mind," Louise said, hands against her cheeks.

"_Ah,_" the neomah said knowingly. "_So it was sex._"

"I told you not to mind! Why didn't you listen? You… you stupid perverted thing!"

"_Mmm hmm. Of course, my princess. So you weren't thinking at all about the touch of a man's hand against you, his lips against yours, and how he carefully, gently…_"

"I'm not listening! La la lah!"

Marisalon laughed, rich peals sounding out in her head. "_Oh my. How very amusing. So you weren't thinking about the many pleasures of men, then. I believe you._"

"Good," Louise said petulantly.

"_Clearly, your amorous thoughts were directed towards a woman. That is why you are so embarrassed about them._"

Louise spluttered. "I… it… no! Just no! It was a man! It wasn't a woman!" Birds lifted off from the trees, spiralling away from the noise.

"_Fine. It wasn't a woman, it was a man,_" Marisalon said, sniggering. "_I've had my fun anyway. You're making enough noise for both of us, and scaring all the animals. Do you want your yelps and screams to draw attention?_"

Reluctantly, the girl accepted that the perverted thing in her head might have a point. "I wasn't yelping," she muttered, hugging her knees. Her eyes drifted to the water, and the shapes moving around in it, under the surface. "I'm going to see if I can catch a fish," she said. "Start being _useful _and tell me anything you know about fishing!"

With a splashing, one of the dark fish in the water leapt out, and landed in her lap. Louise shrieked, and threw it aside; it wriggled in futility, lying on the lakeside mud gasping.

Marisalon made an interested noise. "_Dinner_," she said.

It was some kind of… possibly it was mullet. Louise wasn't quite sure; fish usually made its way to her in an already prepared form, and though she had read several of the books of naturalism in her parents library, she hadn't paid much attention to the piscine pictures.

"_Yes, that's mullet,_" the neomah informed her, "_I had it when summoned by one of my cults. Not the nicest of fish – it has a rather strong flavour which I didn't like very much – but I don't think we're in a position to be picky._" She paused. "_Or maybe we are. See if any more fish feel like they wish to sacrifice their lives to feed your hunger, my fair princess. Something nicer._"

"It's… it's just a fluke," Louise managed, trying to calm down from the shock. Breathing quickly hurt her chest. "It… it was probably trying to escape a predator or something. You… you think I can just stick my hand into… into the water and come out with food?" To demonstrate, she did just that, and felt something squirm in her hand. It was a frog.

The girl screamed again, and hurled the frog as far away as she could. That turned out to be far enough that it sailed all the way over the lake and hit a tree on the other side.

"_What did you do that for?_" Marisalon demanded of her. "_Frog is nice, especially if it's one of the ones with the interesting drugs in it._"

"I _hate _frogs," Louise said, scrubbing her hands in the water. "Really, really hate them." To her shame, she was on the edge of tears. "They're just… the worst. When… when I was younger, the thing I couldn't stand was when Henrietta wanted to… to fill ponds with frogs and I had to help her, but I hated it! They're… they're slimy and… and there's mucus and… and I'm fine with eating them, but they have to be dead first! Really!"

She wiped her eyes. "It's… it's not because it's a frog," she said weakly. "It's just… it's on top of everything and I wasn't expecting it and… and it's just everything. I'm filthy and I hurt and I had to cut my hair and… and my husband is dead and I might be pregnant and you were deliberately winding me up and I just want to be _home_. And then on top of everything, I had a frog in my hand when I didn't expect it!"

"_There, there, my princess,_" Marisalon said soothingly. "_It's only for a little while longer. Just a bit more. Even if the beckoning we will attempt tonight does not work, you will be out of these woods, and it will only be, what, perhaps a hundred or so of your kilometres before we get down to the ports on the south coast._"

"I… I suppose that's something," Louise said weakly. She shuddered, shedding her buff jacket and hanging it up on a nearby tree. Mud squelching between her toes, she waded into the lake, uncaring of the sharp fallen masonry she stood on. The water was cold, but it somehow didn't feel as cold as cold water should have felt, though her scars ached. She began to paddle out into the deeper bits. She would swim a little, warm herself up – that was what her mother had always encouraged when in colder water.

It felt strange to be in the water without a cloud of hair following her. But stranger still was the sense of… strength she had here. She felt utterly tireless. As she swam she could have been resting for all the exertion she was putting in. She moved through the water like a knife; it was like she was swimming through air. And when she put her head underwater, she could see perfectly, her vision unblurred and clear.

Louise rolled over onto her back, and lay there, floating. So. Another one of her talents, these strange magics which were a mark that… that she wasn't a normal mage. They were all strange, but… she'd ceased to be surprised by them some time ago, if she were to be honest. There were better things to get upset about than powers which could help her. Idly, she breathed out, and sank, her whole body moving as if it belonged there when she swam down to the bottom of the lake. Looking around with clear eyes, she could see that this lake was not the natural formation she had thought it was. Emerging through the silt, she could see clear terraces of white rock, which might have been steps and might have been seats. Something glinted in a passing ray of sunlight which penetrated the depths, and she started out for it.

However, it did still appear that she needed to breathe, she thought, as she surfaced and gasped for air.

"_By my reckoning,_" Marisalon said hesitantly, "_though I am not entirely certain, I suspect that any gifts with the water and the oceans you possess might come from the Great Mother herself, the Sea Who Marched Against the Flame. She is terrible and beautiful, generous to those who pay her proper respects and unforgiving to those who fail to do so. Her indigo depths and brightly coloured surface stretch out over vast expanses and she dwells below each layer of the City. When a district of the City displease her, whether for lack of beauty, some grave insult or something only she knows, her vengeance is slow but ceaseless, like her tides._"

"Well," Louise said, running her hands through her short hair, "it's only natural that I want such gifts, then." As she thought, she scrubbed at her skin, trying to avoid the scars but otherwise removing what removed of caked in blood and mud. After all the grime covering it had been removed, her skin looked very pale and vulnerable. "The Albionese rebels have been utterly dreadful to me, so I too will show them ceaseless vengeance. And… poor Prince Cearl, and poor Princess Henrietta, and poor Princess Sophia. I'll be getting revenge, vengeance for them too. And… and my hair will, will grow back and the scars won't… won't look so ugly and red and I'll be beautiful again."

"_My princess, you are beautiful,_" Marisalon told her.

"You'd say that to a rock," Louise accused.

"_If it was a very beautiful rock, yes, especially if it was a gemstone,_" the neomah agreed. "_And you, my lady, are emerald._"

Despite herself, the girl grinned. "Touché," she said. "There was a glint of something down there. I'm going to see what it was."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The sunset over Albion painted the western skyline a flaming orange. Dressed once again in her now-dry clothes, Louise huddled as close to the fire as she could tolerate, warming herself. On her plate sat an ornate silver plate, littered with fish bones and skin.

With a somewhat excessive sigh, she looked down at the dish and pouted. It was a very beautiful tray, she had to admit, made of intricately engraved silver. It was blackened somewhat, from where she had put it in the fire to burn off the muck, but it was still elegant and dignified. She certainly hadn't expected to be eating off something like this.

It was also a crushing disappointment.

"Why the long face?" asked her sword, from its position in the fire.

"I had hoped it was going be… some secret long lost magical weapon or armour or _something_," Louise said, slightly sulkily. "A plate is… well, it's useful and I managed to fry the fish on it – and hardly burned it at all that much, for your information, but it's hardly some… some ancient relic of the dragon cultists or something! Mysterious glints in lakes in ruined cities should… should have the decency to be more special!"

"Really? Could have fooled me, if it's not an Urkhanine thing," her sword said. "I mean, it looks like the stuff they made. You know, the same kind of decorations that they had on their armour, right before I stabbed right through and then came the screaming and the cutting and the spilling of the blood."

"Oh, look," Louise said, resorting to sarcasm, "you decided to remember something about your past, did you?"

"Yep," said the blade, countering with, "And I hope you weren't hoping to cheat on me with some slutty dragontooth dagger. Well, unless you dual-wield us. I used to know a darling spear; almost as attractive as your glaive. We should go rescue it! I bet it'd be very grateful to me!"

The girl was very glad she didn't fully understand what was going through her sword's head. The head which he did not have. His handle, possibly. Instead, she decided to finish eating her fish. She had washed her hands before eating, but she was still having to eat hot fish bare-handed. It was just as well her skin wasn't burning when, intellectually, she knew it really should have.

She was probably getting into bad habits. Not just the manner in which she was eating – which was completely inappropriate for a well-bred young lady – but also the casual disdain for minor pain and harm. She would need to train herself to remember that she really shouldn't be sitting a metal plate which had very recently been in the fire on her lap. Which… uh… she sniffed…

"Drat!" Louise said loudly, picking up the silver plate and putting it down.

"Something the matter? Something to kill?" asked her sword.

"No, not that." Her nose wrinkled. "I smelt the jacket was scorching." She sighed. "At least it's black; it won't show the burns."

"We could cut them out!"

"… shut up, stupid sword. Why are you so obsessed with cutting?"

As she curled up, next to the fire, she had the distinct impression that the sword was pulling a funny face at her. It must have been something to do with how the underlighting of the fire cast shadows across the hilt from the guard. "I am a sword," it said, patronisingly. "My existence is war. Well, war and other more minor conflicts. If I'm not being used to cut, maim, murder, mutilate or murder, I'm not much of a sword! And I'm bored. A bored sword."

"_Such monomania is a common trait of the blades of the City,_" Marisalon interjected. "_And, fair lady, much as I do not wish to hassle you, I might suggest that we get started on the beckoning circle as soon as possible._"

Louise knew she really should, but she prevaricated. It was warm by the fire, and her stomach was full, and she had all night. After all, the beckoning of the sesselja had been incredibly hard going, and she would need to concentrate for six hours more for this. She could take a rest before beginning that. And given that her sword was being verbose…

"I wonder," she asked it, idly, "what kind of battles you fought in? What was the biggest thing you've ever killed?" That sounded like the most probable way to get it to remember things, given its obsessions. It was a talking, magic-eating sword and it no doubt had other abilities.

There was a groan from Marisalon. "_Did you have to do that?_" the neomah complained. "_Now he won't shut up._"

"Well," the sword said, drawing out the word, "the battle that landed me on that swamp… why, that was a glorious one! The Tristic banners amassed all along one side of the plain, the Gallian… or were they Romalian? Well, the second side also had banners, raised high over the village of Grandple! Oh, I got to cut down the flag-bearers and the way their men panicked when their banners fell… it was truly a sight to behold! My partner, hands soaked in blood, holding me high, and I was feeding off all the spells they were throwing at him!

"Now, of course, my partner's boss-guy had sent him and his mage-knights in to break the morale of the army, because we were pretty scary! And by pretty scary, I meant, me and partner made men run just at the sight of us! But once we'd killed the guy we had to kill, we pulled back, and the other guys were milling around like useless sheep! Still, they had the high ground and outnumbered us and… oh, come to think of it, they might have been another group of Tristic armies. I mean, I know I fought a lot of them because they didn't like what my partner and his boss-guy were doing. He was a real big guy at the time, my partner, you know. From the southlands. Never liked the weather this far north. Anyway, we pulled back, and they were going 'okay, we killed a lot of their mage-knights, but now they're running away, and we're still in the good position.

"But that was just what my partner wanted them to think. Because we'd rigged the entire village up with killing magic, and when it started raining it was too late for them. We turned pretty much the entire area into quicksand… no, that's not the word. The stuff that people sink into, that's not water? Actually, I didn't like that bit of the battle much, because we were only watching and not doing much, apart from riding down people who ran away.

"Oh! But then the elves showed up, and that's where things got interesting! Man, what a battle! So much magic to eat, and lots of spirits that I got to tear apart, too! And elves have all kinds of fun blades which I get to cross with, and their armour is far more enjoyable to stab than the iron and steel you people use. Though with my last partner, your loverboy, at least you've improved your armour. You have plate now, rather than just the mostly chain you used back then. Chain is boring, because I can just stab right through it, and it grates against me. But they couldn't stop my partner. Not until they made the land rise up and crushed him under mounds and mounds of earth.

"Now, that was cheating, and I was pretty full on magic, so of course I took over and clawed my way out and kept on killing, but partner was always better at it than me and then the elves went and cut off the arm his body had me in, so I fell into the swamp… oh, there was a swamp, by the way, and then I ended up stuck there, until someone found me hundreds of years later. And then your loverboy bought me. That's about it." The sword paused, making it even more obvious that it had no need to breathe. "What was the question again?"

Louise stretched, pulling herself into a half-sitting position and pushed a branch back onto the fire. "That about answered it," she said, thinking deeply. "So… hmm. The battle in which you were lost was near Grandple, was it? That's… near the Grand Duchy of Guldenhorf, as I recall. South-eastish." She frowned. "And you can… can c-control people?" she asked.

"Only if they're not all there," the sword said bluntly. "Dead, unconscious, things like that. I had to do that for you once already, but the other you was the one there and she was nearly dead and almost out of it, and… and oh! I need to have eaten lots of magic first. Takes it out me."

Louise shivered, and shook her head. "I don't like that," she said. "It doesn't feel right, a sword doing such things."

"You'd be dead," it replied. "You know, like all the people who used to live here. I think I know this place. This is Verlamion, right? Or was it Verramion?"

The girl sat bolt upright. "That was what the dragon said it was called," she said, warily. "Verlamion."

"Yes, that was it." The blade paused. "We killed everyone here. My partner at the time was laughing. So was I! Fighting all those dragons, ancient ones who had all these tasty magics… those were the days. And then she wrote a poem. I rather liked it. Of course, she was always very poetical." And then the sword began to declaim something, in a language which flickered half at the edge of awareness.

"_Oh my,_" Marisalon said. "_I did not expect that from that blade. That was actually rather beautiful._"

'What did that mean?' Louise thought curiously. 'That was the First Tongue, yes?'

"_A dialect thereof, and rather better spoken than that dragon managed,_" the neomah said. "_Hmm. It's a fairly different dialect from the proper version we use in the City, but the grammar at least is recognisable, even if I don't get all the words. I can't translate the structure or the rhyme, so it's going to lose a lot, but I'll give it a go._" She coughed.

"_Night comes on cast-wide wings_  
_and spreads its claws. White stands_  
_alone and in its loneliness _  
_it is unready. Thoughts guard_  
_for traps of words and artifice;_  
_so they are torn from foe's hands_  
_and placed against their children's nests._  
_One hand holds down the neck_  
_of dragon-lord; the other wields the_  
_blade of the executioner. _  
_The city burns, walls fall, towers tumble,_  
_and hearts sing with joy_  
_for monsters are slain and banners_  
_raised to the night's sky._"

Louise tilted her head, as she listened to the translation. Marisalon was clearly doing this on the fly, because sometimes she would pause to let a sentence finish before she continued, and the poetry she could hear in the original even without knowing it was lacking from the words she understood. But still. "You… were one of the blades carried by one who knew the Founder Brimir?" she asked, awe-struck.

"The name does ring a bell," the sword said.

"_Oh my,_" Marisalon drawled. "_Imagine that. The blade knows about the central figure of your religion. The name of your prophet rings a bell to him. Why, my fair princess, truly you have the holiest of weapons here. He is too holy to use, and so you must build a shrine to entomb him, for glory everlasting._" The neomah paused. "_That was not a suggestion,_" she added. "_Even if entombing him would stop him blabbering on and on. Oh well. Fairest lady, it is growing dark, and I do believe that the nights are shorter now than when you summoned me. And it would be a good idea to get the basics done when it is still light, in preparation. If you would talk with your blade, it can be done later._"

The girl groaned, but pulled herself to her feet. Marisalon was right, curse her, and even if it was nice and warm beside the fire and she was feeling full, she really should get this done now. It astonished her now in retrospect that she had managed to do this with a broken arm, on the edge of blacking out from the pain. She had to get this right, if she could. And with luck, tonight she'd be headed home. Even if she failed tonight, she could try again tomorrow. And she'd be able to see her family and eat properly and… she drew a deep, shuddering breath, and went to pick up the bag with the ritual components in.

* * *

{0}

* * *

"How's that?" Louise said, standing back up to admire her handiwork. Green fire had scorched away the turf and grasses, leaving her a nice clean white surface to work on, and soot from the fire had proven a very satisfactory material for sketching out the beckoning circle.

Compared to the one needed for the sesselja, this was rather more ornate. Her black charred circle was surrounded by words which Marisalon had laboriously worked her through, and within it, a smaller circle encased a shape which resembled a wasp seen from above. It felt much more proper this way, Louise had to admit; it just felt… wrong to be summoning – or beckoning in this case – without a little bit of ceremony.

And now, the finishing touches. Carefully, taking her utmost caution not to smudge anything, she took the bell she had asked from the dragon and laid it down beside the markings. She left the clapper bound, for now; it was not time to start it ringing. Digging through the bag, she withdrew the two small crystals and placed them on the soot-marked wasp-shape, where its eyes would go. The gold coin went on its head, in the centre. The last part was the sweet-smelling herbs, and those went outside the circle, a bundle at each of the cardinal directions and one more, pointing north-east.

"_The south one is a little squint,_" Marisalon said critically.

Louise made the adjustment. "Better?" she asked.

"_It'll do. Your dragon didn't have any sugar-beet, but I hope the herbs will do. Agatae love sugar-beet, but they're generally fond of sweet things._" Marisalon made an annoyed noise. "_Your selfish dragon refused to give up any of his honey,_" she huffed.

"He's not my dragon," the girl protested half-heartedly. With a sigh, she went to wash off her hands. When she returned, she took a deep breath, "Do you think I'm ready to start?" she said.

"_I think so,_" the neomah said. "_You're a fair ritualist; to manage to call the sesselja on your first try when you were so badly injured shows that. I think, perhaps, the study of your local magic and your familiar summoning might have helped you. As for the rest; show no doubt, show no fear, do not harbour the possibility that it might go wrong. And long to be home; the agatae live to carry riders to where they wish to go, and such is a little prayer to them._"

Louise blushed faintly, at the praise. Picking up the bell, she pulled the muffler off the clapper, and holding it before her, she began to ring it. Then it fell to the long, slow, rote recitation of the phrases Marisalon prompted her to say, all the while trying to keep her desire to be home foremost in her mind.

The sky grew darker and darker, as the hours crept by. There was a glow in the south, a sort of murky dirty colour; no doubt it was Londinium. The red moon rose first, a waning shape lighting the glade in dim red light. Her right arm grew to ache, and she was thoroughly sick of the sound of the bell. In the second hour, the sword had spent some time complaining, but she had ignored it as she paced around the circle, stopping at the marked points to ring the bell and speak the words her head-familiar told her to. Sometimes she rang it in one hand; sometimes in the other. Sometimes out at arm's length; sometimes by her side; sometimes over her head. It all blended into a monotony of ache and noise.

A little part of her nagged that the springtime familiar summoning ritual was _so _much easier than this. But then again, she had managed to muck up that, while she had done the sesselja ritual first time. So clearly, it was her innate righteousness, determination, and hard work which made her good at this, and so she would _keep _on working hard because she would _not _fail again.

The light in the ruins dimmed, as high altitude clouds blocked the light of the red moon. And Louise became aware of the _other _light. It had been lost in the glow of Taksony, the red moon. It was a wan, pale blue-green.

And it was not coming from her, nor from her beckoning circle. All around her, she could see it reflected off the pale stone of this ruined city and the verdant greenery painted by it in sickly tones. But it was not the rocks which were glowing, and it was not the plant-life.

Her repetition of rote-learned phrases stumbled and stuttered, as her heart began to beat like a drum. Because she could see what glowed in the dark.

The figures were not men. Not any more, at least. Once they might have been. Once the pale faces smeared with mud and worse things might have loved and laughed and smiled. Once the things entangled in rotting swamp vegetation, punctuated with faintly glowing blue crystals, might have been human bodies. Once they might not have had wounds opened across their flesh which shone with pale green light, a washed-out mockery of her own magic.

But if that had ever been true, it was no longer so. Now, around her in the darkness of a long-dead city, the swamp-claimed corpses of men and women dead days waited, watching. They knew she was watching them, now. They started whispering, in mad, parched voices, or else they spoke words liquid with rot. She might not have been able to understand them through the decay and the filth, though she could catch odd Albionese or Brimiric words, but she could hear the tone.

She could hear the hate.

And she could see other things about them, a strange overlay in her senses which she could hardly explain. The pale faces of the fresher-looking ones still retained some individual features - snatches of their old sensibilities and faces - but elsewhere all that made them unique persons had seemingly begun to melt and dribble like wax, subsumed into concepts. They were not people, if that was what they had been; now they were Soldier and Hellfire and Blade and Terror and other abstractions. Some had their old swords or pistols in place of their hands, while others had skulls fused with the helmets of the Republicans. On some, hair burned with a corona of green fire, while the flayed faces of others wept silver tears. Those that still had eyes seemed perpetually shocked and horrified, lids absent, while those without them sniffed around with noses that snorted wisps of tarry black smoke.

And then there were the more ancient ones. She could not explain them, save to say that there was nothing personal, nothing human about them anymore. They hung more to the rear, sniffing and wailing and whispering.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard her horse scream and bolt.

Red-hot pain clawed its way across her back even as she went reaching for her blade, and the girl went down, rolling over her laboriously prepared circle. Stomach muscles screaming, she pushed herself up into a crouch, and sprang at the creature which had managed to get behind her. Her fist, wreathed in green flame, sunk into a torso made of river mud and dead plants and blew it apart from the inside, revealing the ancient cracked bones within.

The pale, battered freshly-dead face sunk into the shoulders of the monster screamed, fire spilling out of its mouth and from its eyes. It swung at her with an arm which ended on a bloodied human hand where the flesh had worn away from the claw-like fingerbones; Louise caught the attack on her forearm and grabbed the arm. A wrench and a twist, and it was torn free; she booted the creature in the chest and sent it sprawling to the ground.

The _thing _of clay and rotting flesh screamed through its jawless mouth, greenish white flames rolling from the gaping wound to drool down onto the floor. The harsh ululation had things which could have been words in it, but they were lost amidst the pain and the rage. Louise gagged as she unconsciously inhaled the smell of burning meat – oh, how it was familiar now – and rotting mud, and leapt back, scrambling up a fallen wall to higher ground.

"What are these things?" she screamed, managing to draw her blade. With a thought, the brand on her forehead pulsed to full burning life, lighting up the night around her like a torch. Now at least she could see where she was putting her feet, and without thinking she sprinted up a wall, climbing up the pockmarks to a partially intact second floor.

"_I don't know!_" Marisalon shouted back. "_Elementals, Dead things, gods, something I don't know about! I don't know! They… they could be the Mortlake things that the… behind you!_"

The squelch of a sodden foot had barely registered, but the warning was enough to have the girl spinning. The thing behind her looked… looked like a soldier of the New Model Army. But they were drowned, their flesh bloated. Pale green fire dripped from its opened-up ribcage, forcing its way out from between the marsh grasses which bound them in.

And in the glinting of her eyes, Louise could only see rot, taste decay, smell putrefaction. Nausea washed over her.

"Moardner!" it screamed. Fingers twisted into talons, it leapt at her.

Louise ran it through. Whipping her blade out, she kicked it down, and then stomped down upon its chest with her bare foot, caving in its chest. A scream forced its way out of the thing, and for good measure she cut its head off. And then she was back to a guarding position, just in time to hack down the first skull-faced monster which clawed its way up the same wall she had. But there was a second, and a third, and then another one was behind her and she was surrounded.

Blood trickled in a hot bead from a gash on her forehead. She could not spare the hand to wipe it away. Not when there was always another claw to deflect, another cut of earth or putrid flesh to make. These… these things did not fear, did not flee, did not even back off when she cut down another of their number. She had not realised how much she had relied on that simple fact when fighting humans. And constantly they screamed; cries of "Moardner" and "Sûnde" and "Fanwegen de Republyk" and a hundred other things she could not hear through the clamour and the beating of her own heart, a drum played far too quickly.

Ice-cold fear grabbed her. She was going to die. There was nothing she could do to stop it. She should just give up right now. She winced as something below screamed, and it echoed inside her head even when the noise had stopped. What did she care about home? About life? About…

"_Snap out of it!_" Marisalon ordered. "_You're not going to die here! They're trying to get to you!_"

White-hot fury burned away the cold, and the light of her soul unfolded from her body, spilling out to cascade across the floor in green and brazen flames. From the clawed-open tears in the back of her buff jacket, four delicate wings unfolded. Nearly translucent, gleaming with a monocoloured rainbow of shades of green, they were kin to that of the dragonfly. Her eyes were no longer even slightly human, and needle-like teeth gleamed brass in the illumination. Hacking and tearing, her terrible majesty burning the world around her, Louise cut her way towards the opening through which the monsters were coming, and threw herself out.

A green sun shot out into the night suspended on newborn wings, casting its light down upon the ruined city. Dead eyes below stared up at it, their own ghostly remembrances of the fire that had killed them muted compared to the real thing.

Louise circled, her mind caught up in the fearlessness of her burning soul. This was what she had missed for all these years, with her inability to grasp levitation spells? This freedom, this ability to float above the problems of the world? Even through the pain and the terror, it was glorious. She couldn't imagine what it would be like in better circumstances.

"_So,_" Marisalon observed. "_They're Dead things. Possibly the things you killed escaping from the Pale Tower. Possibly not, though some of the bodies which made up those things were fresh enough that you are the likely source. And of course, the pale mockery of your supernal fire spilling out of those old wounds on them was a clue._"

"What do you know about… them?" the girl insisted. Her light allowed her to see the milling crowds below. There looked to be dozens of them, at least. Trying very hard not to think about how to fly and just letting her body do what was needed, she swooped in to crouch on top of the tallest ruined structure she could find.

"_Hardly anything,_" the neomah said. " _The only Dead in the City are slaves, and I never cared to find out more about them than I had to. They're… wrong. Unnatural. Please tell me you have some kind of myths about them here? All I know is that when humans die, sometimes you get normal ghosts which are like spirits of the dead person, and sometimes you get murderous angry things that eat people. And my cultists always used to worry about that, and you don't know about it, so something is different here and… oh, Unspeakable Blue!_"

The reason for the outburst was made quite clear, for in the light of her burning soul Louise could see the bounding figures leaping between tumbled rocks, scrambling up fallen columns and sprinting down plant-choked roads.

They didn't move like men. They moved like beasts, and even when they were on two legs their gait was one of a predator. They might have spoken like men, but they were lesser, ruined, degenerate.

"_So, my princess, ready to fly off and leave these things behind?_" Marisalon suggested. "_Like this, we should be able to reach safety, and the dragon said they don't go too far away from Mortlake._"

"No," Louise whispered.

"_… oh, no. No, no, my lady, you're injured and…_"

Louise's knuckled whitened around the handle of her sword. "They're my responsibility," she said. "If they were traitors I killed, then I am bound to send them to the judgement of the Lord. To linger as a ghost or… or a thing of flesh and mud and plants is wickedness. And if they are spirits, using the bodies of men in their damned ways, than I am duty-bound as a daughter of the Church to drive them off if I can." She paused, breathing deeply. "A noble does not shirk her duty to the Crown and Faith. If she is able, she does what she should. She is a steel blade in the hand of righteousness. So I will kill them all, either way."

"_What if you can't?_" the neomah said harshly. "_You're injured. Badly._"

"They're my responsibility," Louise repeated, stubbornly, leaping off with her blade in hand.

In the remains of what had once been a mighty hall, she made her stand. Beneath the shattered ribcage of broken vaulting, she broke bones and burned flesh. The waters which pooled here were fouled by the congealed blood and ooze of the monstrous things, which screamed their words of hate at her.

One step, one splash. A creature was severed at the waist. A step back and an outstretched hand; sand poured forth to envelop and flay three foes. And then she was snatching up a fallen blade which had been carried by one of the fresher creatures, born in her off-hand, and she was a whirling dervish of fire and sand.

The memories which were not hers came again. But this time she was as steel, clear in her purpose, sharp and resolute yet flexible. She rode the wave, at the very peak, but she did not fall to the waves of otherness which surged and flowed. She could hear the songs of the not-hers in the back of her mind, and for the first time, she recognised the silent dances of the crimson lady of the storm in her motions.

As she killed, she sang out. It was one of the hymns of her childhood, a song of salvation, a song of thanks to the Founder for the freedom of men.

When dawn came, only one figure was standing in this fallen hallway. As the rosy light crept through the opened roof, Louise let herself sag, though she remained upright, alone in this charnel house.

She was bloodied. She was wounded. Her buff jacket was torn in many, many places from the clawing of the fiends, though her flesh had turned many of the blows which had got through. She had kept her wings this time, and they gleamed in the light, though she knew she could retract them any time she wished. Welts lined both hands, from where a creature of ancient bones and mud had ensnarled her in freezing, burning tendrils. She had reached into its chest, and torn out its crystal heart.

Thinking of that, she reached down, and picked up the crystal. It was a dark, murky blue-black. It looked a little like a windstone, but it did not have the brilliant radiance of one of those calcifications of the power of the wind. And – her eyes widened – there was a hand-print on it, of a greenish-umber hue, which even now seemed to be flaking away.

In the light of the morning sun, the whole crystal bubbled and boiled, hissing like chalk dropped into acid by Professor Colbert. It screamed, faintly, the same screams of the monster which it had once resided in. It was not the only one to do so. All across the ruined hall, the mounds of burned and dismembered corpses were hissing and bubbling and screaming.

Louise looked again in the one in her hand. It was literally shrinking as she watched, noxious black vapours escaping which seemed to be trying to form a vaguely humanoid shape. Even as she went for a blade, though, the morning's sunlight washed it away, dissolving it in light. And the entire thing tingled in her hand, feeling like nothing less than… than a windstone releasing its trapped energies. There was the same crackle of trapped lightning, the same chillness of fresh air.

"The… windstones?" she asked herself. "Or something like them?" She shook her head. This bore thought. She tossed the stone in her hand down into a puddle of light creeping in through the ruined door, and went to drag the bodies off each other, so each would be exposed to the light in turn. And… her horse was gone. Once she had cleared up here, she would have to fly until she was clear of this forest. Unless she could find the parts of the beckoning ritual – but no. That was not likely. She would have to try to get down to one of the ports on the south coast. She shook her head sadly, and began a prayer for the dead. Perhaps it would encourage them to go on to face their judgement for their sins in the eyes of the Lord.

Below the water, a fragment of the stone – half blue, half greenish-umber – remained.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The crowd before him had a terrified, hollow look in their eyes. Cromwell did not blame them. He could see the cloud which emanated from the pit where once the Pale Tower had stood, and he had – on touring the city – seen the masses scarred by its noxious fumes. When he looked out over the plaza, he could see the discoloured roofs which were still caked in the acidic blood which had rained down, see where it had etched through buildings and left them unfit for human habitation. His city, his triumph was sickened by the… the abomination which had occurred, and there was only one response he could give.

There was only one response that the populace could accept.

"My children," he said, his voice rising in the familiar cadence of the priest he had once been, "I come before you to speak of mourning. Mourning for the dead. Mourning for those whose lives have been ruined by this horrible, horrible deed. I have walked through the streets of the city, as I see in person how best to aid those who have lost limbs, loved ones, livelihoods. I have seen women weeping in Gardner Street and Ellismere Street, newly widowed because their brave, heroic husbands in the New Model Army gave their lives, saving others. I ask you, this very night and forever after, pray for those who suffer so that their suffering might be relieved. We cannot let this horrible tragedy pull us apart; we must bind together, like the handful of reeds which are weak on their own, but strong when taken together! My children, I feel for you! I feel for your pain! And I feel your anger!

"For after the mourning is done, why, then there is vengeance! Vengeance for scarred faces, ruined lives, murdered children! Yes, I say 'murder'! For this was no accident! No, it was not an accident! It was sabotage! Wilful, murderous, malevolent sabotage!"

Angry murmurs sounded through the crowd.

"We have undeniable evidence that agents of Tristain were responsible for the sabotage of the Pale Tower, perhaps in the misguided aim of freeing the traitors to the Holy Republic imprisoned there! Shame on them, we call out! Shame on a nation which would murder countless innocents for their goals! Shame on a nation which attacks without warning, without a declaration of war! Well, so be it!

"Yes, so be it," continued Cromwell. "If they wish for war, then they will have war! We will give them war! God is on the side of the Holy Republic, and the Holy Void itself frowns on such monstrosity as was carried out! The stars themselves predict our victory! Our ships shall darken their skies! Our ambassadors are already carrying message to Gallia and Germania, telling them of the vile deeds of the viper which nests between them and warning them to beware the kindly gaze of the Tristainian serpent! As we have seen, it is toxic, envenomed, wicked! Let us pray to the Lord God that our cousins in foreign lands do not fall prey to the same treachery that we did, but that they instead learn from our hard-learned example.

"For as all men know, we Albionese are a gentle and kindly nation, not given to rash action or warfare. We are gentle, but when we are pushed, oh! Then a mighty giant is awoken, and those foes who underestimated us learn to their folly that the nation they dismissed as mere 'shopkeepers' and 'bargemen' has mighty jaws hidden behind our kind smile. Well, the Tristainians have woken that giant, and I tell you this! We will not stop, until we have extracted the blood price of all the children and the women slain by treachery!

"As the Founder said; pay each man in kind. Love with love, respect with respect, kindness with kindness, affront with affront, death with death. Our foes have incurred a mighty debt, and they will ill-enjoy paying off the weight of their sins. But pay they will! Tristain will pay! For the Pale Tower, they will pay! For the weeping widows of Gardner Street and Ellismere Street and many, many more, they will pay! For the men blinded by the blood which fell from the heavens, they will pay! For the children choked by the toxic fumes of this malevolence, they will pay!"

The roar of the crowd was one of approval. Folding his hands before him, Cromwell bowed his head.

"My children," he said, "I go now to take command of our fleet. It is by our judgement that they are found wanting, and so! War they have asked for, war they have begged for, and it is war they will have!"

* * *

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	22. 21: The Wrath of God

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 21: The Wrath of God**

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* * *

The skies above the flying isle of Albion were blue, only a few scattered clouds denoting the island was at its nadir. The weather had shifted over the past few weeks and now the brief Albionese summer was here for the handful of weeks before autumn snatched it away. The deluges of spring were draining, born off by the heat or lost over the edge, and so work-gangs flocked over the causeways and the bridges of the damp land to repair the damage the spring floods had inflicted.

It was an ill-fated summer, everyone agreed. Around Londinium, the crops had wilted in the fields, poisoned. There was already rumour of a curse, of punishment from the Lord God for the killing of a king. The Pale Tower, that ancient fortress of the royals, had fallen, and left in its place a toxic cantankerous sore. And there were darker tales reaching the towns and villages of the south coast; stories of men who had gone too close to that place and been twisted in mind and flesh, of burning angels stalking the streets and madness and plague in the north.

The guards at the outermost gates of Port's Mouth sincerely hoped that none of those tales were true, when they thought of them at all. They had enough to think about, what with surge in traffic coming into their town and orders from on high that they should check everyone who wasn't with the New Model Army. It was a completely unreasonable request in their opinion, the kind made by panicking superiors without considering how implausible they were. But orders were orders. What could you do?

A steady stream of carts had been coming for days, down from the road which lead to Oramsarbour. The one which they could see approaching this checkpoint, however, stood out because it did not have the flag of the Holy Republic flying over it. Drawn by two donkeys, there was something about it which drew their attention. It might have just been boredom, but still, Maxwell and Margaret decided that they might as well show their devotion to the cause of the Republic by making sure that no dastardly Tristainian spies were trying to sneak in.

And it might be good for a few pence to turn a blind eye to not-strictly-legal but certainly-not-treasonous activities, right?

The new flags of the Republic flapped above the gate as the two guards, dressed in their brown uniforms, made their way forwards to block the vehicle. "Halt, in the name of the Republic," Maxwell ordered, and the driver acquiesced.

His female companion strolled up. "Good day," she said. "And what business might you be having in Port's Mouth?"

Yes, the driver was certainly nervous when seen up close. He was perspiring heavily – which wasn't odd in its own, because everyone was swearing in this weather – but it was a cold and clammy sweat. He tried to meet her eyes, but kept on flinching away.

A small figure, swaddled in heavy clothing despite the heat, sat behind the driver, under the shade. They shrank back slightly at the approach of the guards, hoping not to be noticed. That very movement only made them more obvious to the watchmen.

"Hello, hello, hello, what do we have here?" Max said, grinning predatorily. "Sir, get off this cart or so help me I will do something you regret."

The female guard reached in to yank back the hood of the robed figure, revealing a pale, worried-looking face. They squeaked and tried to flee; Magaret threw herself on top of the smaller person, pinning them down. She did not let go, no matter how the much the man – barely more than a boy – fought. "Get 'im!" she yelled out. "Guards, guards, to me!"

The violence which followed was brief and soon ended with the driver and the suspicious dark-robed figure beaten and bruised. "Who're this lot?" asked one of the newcomers.

"Dunno," Margaret said, "but they were actin' real suspicious and we got our new orders from the Army lot that sneaky people like that are to be held."

"They coulda been spies," Maxwell agreed, giving the grizzled driver a kick.

Behind the cart rode an overweight, darker-skinned man, wearing the robes of a monk emblazoned with the three blue lines of Saint Orieris, patron saint of Gallia. His balding head was slick with sweat, and his mare also seemed to be suffering in the heat. "Blessings be," he said, in a very thick Romalian accent. "In the name of the Lord God, the angels and the Founder Brimir, I you bless."

"Why are you here?" Maxwell said, talking slowly and deliberately as one did to a small child or a foreigner.

The monk blinked, clearly not at home with more than religious rote in Albionese. "I," he frowned, and tried, "_pelligrino_," he tried. "I go to church, holy church, in Albion."

"Right you are, father," the Albionese man said, nodding. Wandering pilgrims seeing the holy sites of Albion were a not-unfamiliar sight in Port's Mouth, and they never had anything worthwhile to give a poor hardworking guardsman, save a blessing. Still, maybe a blessing was worth something, what with all the rumours and troubles going around. And they might have caught some spies today, so that was worth a reward!

The tired-looking monk on his mare inclined his head solemnly, making the sign of the Brimiric pentacle on his chest with his free hand. He rode on by, wiping his brow with his sleeve as he passed under the stone gateway to the city. Wearing a false face, Louise de la Vallière rode into Port's Mouth, accompanied by the cawing of ravens with eyes the colour of the midday sky.

* * *

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* * *

The noise of her horse's hooves on the cobbled streets were almost lost amidst the sound of the town around her. Overweight, tanned and male, Louise maintained her noble air, which was the best way she had found to avoid looking nervous when disguised. Looking nervous did more to ruin a disguise than any slight mistake in colouration or accent, because these inbred islanders had probably only seen a few Romalians before, but they certainly knew what suspicious people looked like. They had been stopping people at the gates, but now she was past them and she was just another pilgrim in the port.

Those books on the paths of Saint Orieris and the holy places upon them she had read as a younger girl had served her well. She had the wind embroidered in blue on her shadowy falsehood of a robe, the mark of the magic of that most holy Saint, and on her back she wore the hollow circle of one who had already visited the empty tomb in Namnetes which was the final memorial to the woman who had followed the Founder Brimir from the Holy Land.

Act like a weary pilgrim, who cares about nothing more than his belly and finding somewhere cheap to sleep for the night. Don't look like you're trying to evaluate everything you see for threats. Just let them see the amusing old fat pilgrim who's sweating too much and who you couldn't take seriously if you tried.

That way, no one else had to die.

It had taken her almost a week to travel the hundred or so kilometres. It had taken her painfully long to find a new mount after her old one had fled from the Dead things in the ruins, and the mule she had first acquired had been a troublesome thing which barely moved faster than walking. More of a trouble, though, had been the flights of dragons she had seen overhead, criss-crossing the land. She was not sure if they had been looking for her or engaged in other business, but it had been enough to force her to travel at night to avoid the eyes in the sky.

It had been up near Basingestoches that she had discovered this new, strange ability to wrap herself in her own shadow and make it seem as if she was anyone she could imagine. She had been hiding in a ditch, waiting for someone with a horse to pass – her own steed having taken lame – when her shadow, one of the not-hers from her dreams, had started whispering to her. At first she had ignored it, because the shadow was an utterly terrible and reprehensible thing, but at some point she must have dozed off and found herself in a nightmare of its twisted imaginings.

She certainly hadn't deliberately fallen asleep because it had offered to teach her a way to hide. No matter what it claimed. It always lied. She hated it. She… she hated the way it had dug through her memories, shown them again through a funhouse mirror, and coaxed her into trying on the faces of the participants, wrapping its tenebral matter around her. She hadn't wanted to… to relive her memories of Viscount Wardes, of her husband in that manner!

But eventually she had awoken, feeling unclean – and an edge of that discomfort still remained whenever her own shadow enveloped her. But no matter how wrong it felt to walk around like this, she could not deny that it was useful. Once she no longer looked like the escaped Louise de la Vallière, once she could be a soldier, a young man, a monk when she needed to be, she could move freely. She could ride through a town and only have to worry about someone trying to talk to her. In Oramsarbour they had chased her after she had taken food from a cart; all that she had needed to do was to get out of sight and shed the disguise, and they had run straight past her.

This was a dangerous thing to be able to do; quite unlike many of the other, mage-like gifts she had. To be able to casually disguise herself in this manner with her own shadow was quite out of the ordinary. She would have to be careful and responsible about how she used it.

"_A little less melancholy brooding, my sweet princess, and a little more paying-attention-to-the-dangerous-and-hostile-town -we-are-riding-through, oh beautiful one,_" Marisalon drawled.

The neomah was right. There were soldiers and sailors everywhere in this city. Some of this might have been expected; Port's Mouth was the foremost naval base on the southern coast of Albion. But not this many. The rumours she had been able to gather from letterboards, posters, and poorly understood overhead conversations were true. The Holy Republic – as it called itself, in a mockery of true Brimiric law – was preparing for war.

And there was only one place they would attack. Gallia was too big, too populated, and anyone with the slightest grasp of politics knew that the emperor of Germania had a none-too-firm grip on his Elector-Khans, and kept them busy and sated with wars to the East – a war in the west would be just another diversion for him. No, Tristain would be their target.

She would not permit that. _Could not _permit that. And so in the meantime she kept her eyes open as she explored the town, finding her way around and acting like a newly arrived pilgrim looking for a cheap place to stay.

By the time she had made her way to the waterfront – or where the waterfront would be in a place which was not a ridiculous floating island only accessible by windships – she had not managed to find a place which was within the budget of the pilgrim she was pretending to be. She had the money, of course, because several officers of the New Model Army she had met along the road had been carrying reasonable sums on their person, but she had to remain unseen. And so she tipped a boy a copper coin to hold her horse for her, and climbed up the wall, to gaze over the void down to the ocean below.

She vaguely recalled from her lessons that Albion was eroding as the years passed, the edges of the floating island slowly crumbling. A few hundred years ago, Port's Mouth and South Hampton had been safely away from the edge. Now a great crack reached up north past South Hampton, and Port's Mouth... well. The girl paused, staring at the vast chains anchored on either side of the divide before her.

It was one thing to know that most of the city was built on Portsea Isle, a broken-away island which was bound by vast steel chains to the rest of Albion. It was another thing to see it, to hear the metal creak and moan in the wind. It was a marvel, a great work blessed by the Pope Gladius IV, one of the mightiest earth mages ever to have lived.

And it was not the only so-bound floating island. She turned and gazed out over the blueness of the sky and down to the blueness of the sea below. There were lesser isles standing vigilant over the docks of Albion, fortress bastions which bristled with cannon. And then, in the distance, several ancient chains, each one made of links larger than a man, bound the Wihgtarisle to the main body of Albion.

Looking more closely at it, Louise raised her eyebrows. She could see that the chains binding the Wihgtarisle were made of the same ancient white stone as made up the dragon ruins, but looking closely it seemed that the links were bound with more modern materials.

"_By my reckoning, they probably salvaged the stronger material from the ruins_," Marisalon observed. "_Such practices are not uncommon in the lands surrounding the Realm. The Realm itself would work in jade-steel for such things, though, for they retain the capacity to forge it. There is a great bridge in red jade-steel which connects the Imperial City in the foothills of the Pole of Earth to the nearest domain-island; I accompanied one of my mistresses across it many times when she was called to the Imperial Court._"

'Now is not the time,' Louise thought back snappishly. 'I'm hungry, and I need to think about what I've seen.'

* * *

{0}

* * *

In the end, she found an eating house sufficiently far from the docks that it was not filled with sailors or soldiers, and tied her mount up under the tired eye of an elderly ostler. The scent of the cannabis smoke from the pipes of the people inside almost made her gag, but it was unlikely anywhere else would be much better. Smoking was an unclean, filthy habit of the lower classes – and Headmaster Osmond – which polluted their souls, but they engaged in it no matter how much they were warned by those more righteous than them.

And her mother made her father smoke outside the house, because it made her sneeze. At least that was much better than it being inside.

She made her way to the bar through the blue haze, clearing her throat and trying to attract the attention of the woman there. Judging from how low-cut the woman's dress was, Louise would not have been surprised if scandalous or inappropriate behaviour also occurred at this establishment, but maybe she was being too judgemental. That was just her mind distracting itself from the difficult process of trying to pretend to be someone she was not.

"Praatsto ek Romaliesk?" she tried. The woman stared blankly back at her, and she was fairly sure she had the Albionese for 'Romalian' right. Evidently not.

"Hoi," she began again. "Ik bin muonts," Louise said in the broken Albionese she had acquired. The deep, soft voice of the shadow-monk was still very strange, coming from her mouth, but she tried to put on the thickest Romalian accent she could manage. "Ik ride tsjerke. Pak fan Hillich Brimir," she made the pentacle, "beade. En paraoal. Ik bin… _pelligrino_?" she hazarded, using the Romalian word – she didn't know the dratted Albionese for 'pilgrim'. "Ik wol graach… uh, brea, tsiis, beannen, wyn" she added. Yes, she had seen people eating bread, cheese and beans, and drinking wine and the words sounded enough like their counterparts in Tristainian that she was almost sure she was asking for what she meant.

This was dangerous – very dangerous. She was exposing herself as a foreigner here. Her only hope was that the Romalian accent would be enough to make them think she was from that holy nation, and that they would not leap to assume that she was a spy. In retrospect, she really should have paid more attention to that tutor who had tried to work on her accent. Admittedly, that old sourpuss would never had approved of it being used in this manner, but as it stood the only thing which might allow her to get away with it was the sheer blatancy of her affected mannerisms.

Well, that and the stupidity of commoners. They probably didn't even know what a Romalian sounded like, let alone speak the language!

"Ja," Louise was fairly sure the barmaid said. The woman was speaking very slowly, as if to a small child, which helped. The next few words were lost, but she heard a distinct "Hillich Republyk", and something which she was fairly sure was asking if she had come to see… something which involved windships – which was helpfully 'wynboat' – and the name 'Cromwell' repeated several times.

"Brea, tsiis, beannen, wyn," Louise repeated slowly, trying to contain her excitement. Cromwell? Here? Within reach?

"Fiifpence," the woman said, holding out her hand. Louise paid, though she was fairly sure she was being ripped off. It didn't matter. She had the money and she didn't think she could object properly. And the news that Cromwell was here… yes. A few lost copper pennies was nothing compared to that.

The wine was watered down and the cheese was over-hard, but Louise had eaten worse – and fewer – things than the decent sized portion of dark rye bread and bowl of bean stew she was presented with. For a moment she wished she had the sesselja with her so she would have been proof against food poisoning, but that had slipped away from her days ago, and fled into some tavern. Marisalon said it would probably lurk around Albion, stealing wine and beer from places where they were stored, and she idly wished it the best of luck. Most of her concentration went into getting the food into her belly as fast as she could. And soon she'd be home and she'd have proper food every day and…

… and she really should have been paying more attention to her surroundings, Louise realised, at the sight of black-jacketed soldiers clomping in through the entrance. And there was the barmaid pointing to her and they were heading her way and… the girl took a deep breath, and glanced down at her hands, checking that the false shadow-flesh was still there. It was. She could feel her sword hanging loose under her outer robe, tucked into an improvised sling which allowed her to sit, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, and her fingers twitched.

"_Easy does it,_" Marisalon cautioned. "_It would be best to get away cleanly._"

"You are Tristainian, ja?" the lead soldier – who looked to be an officer – asked in atrociously accented High Tristainian.

"_So much for cleanly. Five in total; they're not ready, and you look like a fat monk._"

Bringing her knee up and shoving, Louise pushed over the table. It clattered to the ground, sending its contents flying. With a grunt, she booted it. The Albionese officer screamed once as the heavy wooden table crushed him against the wall, with a meaty crunch. But by then, Louise was already on her feet. The nearest man was recoiling in shock; her right hand came around to slam his head into a beam supporting the roof. Pushing off from her other foot, she backhanded one of the other guards, and then her blade was in her offhand in a rising cut and it was all over bar the killing.

It didn't take long.

Then there was silence, save for the sound of Louise's heavy breathing and the moans of the dying. Grabbing the coat of one of the bodies sprawled over the bar counter, she wiped off her blade, and stuffed it back into its scabbard. The other patrons who had not managed to flee screamed and whimpered when she flicked her eyes over them.

"_The door to your right; I can see daylight through it. It must lead out to a back alley,_" Marisalon said shortly. "_My princess, you will need to change faces after this._"

'I know, I know,' Louise thought, sliding back the bolt and stepping into the stinking alley behind the tavern. 'I thought I had them fooled.'

"_Maybe they're looking for any foreigners,_" the neomah suggested. "_Or maybe your Romalian accent sounds like a Tristainian trying to do a Romalian accent. There. The alcove there._"

Louise wrinkled her nose. It was more like a short alleyway, leading up to a now bricked-up door than an alcove, and it smelt strongly of urine. Someone had clearly been using it as a toilet. But at least there was no chance of anyone seeing her change. Trying to breathe only through her mouth, she stepped in, and after checking there were no iterant drunks watching, she let the mental muscle which controlled her shadow relax. The liquid darkness flowed off her skin, pooling momentarily on the ground, and leaving only her.

The thin-faced woman in a worn and muddy New Model Army uniform immediately closed her eyes, and felt her face, patting her way down her body. Of all the things she had done with her strange magic, this was one of the ones which disturbed her the most. When that magic was active, everything about her was shaped by the lie, to the extent – she blushed – when she was pretending to be a man she could pass for a male in every way. It just wasn't right. And it was not helped by the way that, the last time she had slept, the shadow not-her had stolen her face and left her just a shadow herself, telling her that she should realise that it was just another lie. There was always the nagging phobia that she might not look exactly the same when the disguise faded, but the brief check reassured her on that part.

Sleeping was too inconvenient nowadays, anyway. That was the only reason she couldn't be bothered to do it. It certainly wasn't because of the nightmares.

"No more monk disguises," she muttered to herself. "They'll be looking for them. Who next, who next?"

"_Someone who won't be questioned for not knowing Albionese, someone who isn't suspicious, someone who will be overlooked,_" Marisalon responded promptly. "_Fair princess, you managed to avoid being hurt… and good, you are not trailing blood. But we have lost our steed, and we left the saddlebags behind._"

"There was nothing important in them," Louise said.

"_Only most of the money,_" the neomah quipped.

"I have enough… and can get more." She took a deep breath. "Old, ugly… yes. A mad old woman, I think. I… I can go find a church, rest there, pray, settle my thoughts. Cromwell is here… and the ships… and I need to get home and I don't know what to do."

"_Well thought-out, my lady,_" Marisalon said. "_Just make sure you don't start glowing from the light of your soul._"

"I know that!" Louise flinched slightly from the unintentionally loud words, and focussed. In the shadowed alleyway, the dark places seemed to grow subtly darker, and from the corner of the eye they began to writhe and twist. Wisps of darkness leapt up from the ground, forming a layer of scaffolding over Louise's skin, before her shadow flowed up like blackened mercury, sinking into her flesh before melting away. Where once a thin-faced woman in a worn New Model Army uniform had stood, an old lady in a headscarf and rags now took her place. Twists of white hair escaped from her tattered clothes, and milky white cataracts obscured her eyes.

"I feel grotesque," Louise grumbled, hunching down into how she thought an old woman like this should stand.

"_Quiet, my lady. If you must complain ceaselessly, do it in your head. Old senile Albionese ladies do not speak to themselves… or at least, do not do so in Tristainian._" The neomah cleared her throat. "_Let us move on. We shall find your church, and we can think what to do properly there. And remember to walk like an old woman._"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise sat in the pews, her hands – though they were and were not her hands, the lie of her own shadow wrapped around them – folded in her lap. She had to think. Reaching out, she took the copy of the first book of the Novuarch before her, and opened it to the start.

"In the beginning," she read, "the Void unshaped and unmathed was. The geist of the Lord through it swam, and the Void was Him and He was the Void. Time was not, for the Lord counted not the seconds nor the minutes, and He was alone. Then he sung, and in his choir the Void began to change and fire and water and earth and wind were mathed from the void and the spirits of those things joined in the song of the Lord."

She barely needed the book, and its peculiar Albionese phrasing, which crept through into the Romalian. She could have recited it from heart. Religion had always been her comfort in times of trouble, the promise that one day she would control her magic and become the daughter of the de la Vallière family she should have been.

"_It is peculiar, how much this calms you,_" Marisalon noted.

'You wouldn't understand,' she thought back, somewhat snootily.

"_You are most correct, my princess,_" the neomah agreed. "_My previous mistresses and masters usually saw the dominant faiths of their cultures as a weary annoyance at best. Then again, those of the blood of the dragons who summoned me were sorcerers, and their norms were off-skew from what their society would have desired. One – the one who kept me bound for longest – why, she was rumoured to deny her faith entirely in private!_"

'That's dreadful!' Louise mentally protested.

"_Why? After all, elements of their faith were obviously lies. For example, they denied with utmost certainty – a certainty born of ignorance – that the King and the Desert and the Ocean and the other mighty lords of the City were the ones who forged Creation! They worshipped the Traitor Dragons; rebel Princes who were-and-served black-hearted Gaia, one of the two treasonous world-lords who were tempted by the wicked offers of the disloyal Incarna and so murdered their kin to seize power for themselves!_" Marisalon coughed, voice returning to a calmer state. "_To worship such things is falsehood, the self-aggrandisement of traitors who wish to proclaim their victory. Such do the Priests of the Desert say, and so the knowledge of the truth passes to the summoners who enquire about it. Is it any wonder that they grow cynical, weary of the lies their faith tells them?_"

Louise pouted. 'Just because their religion is wrong doesn't meant that it-' she began, and then stopped, because she was not entirely sure where she was going with that. And then she blinked. 'Wait,' she thought, 'would the… the Dragonblooded who attacked me in the hotel be following the same religion?'

"_Ah, my princess, I cannot say. They may have gone native here; they may still hold to their old faith. I could not tell you where they were from, either, though as far as I am aware there are only a few states in the whole of Creation which maintain such wonders – and it did not look like the great trading purchases a few lesser powers might make from mighty lords of the City, like the Green Sun himself who for worship and honour will forge mighty suits such as those._"

'I see,' she thought in response. 'But still, I think the important thing is to get home. But they're obviously…'

The girl wearing the face of an old woman bowed her head, as the Brimiric prayers started. She did not think again until the display of faith was over.

There was one thing she could see for sure. The New Model Army was preparing for war. She did not need Marisalon's comments about logistics and supplies to see it. There were the bulging shapes of troop transports, the fat, barge-like ships designed to land and allow their men to disembark en masse, and there were the more predatory shapes of the warships, bristling with long-barrelled cannons.

Well.

When she put it like that, it really wasn't a choice. She wanted to be home, longed to be home and away from this island with its rain and mist and slightly too-thin air. Away from having to hide under a false face and being attacked by soldiers when she slipped up, away from the frequent need to kill and the way she was finding it easier and easier. She wanted peace and quiet to adjust to how her body kept on changing on her – and she was sure that the transformations and transmutations had not happened so quickly at the academy. The stress was making her less and less like she had begun, she was sure of it.

But when her nation, her parents, her princess were threatened by what these Albionese curs were doing… that was something she could not permit herself. It was her duty to God, the Church, her parents and Princess Henrietta to safeguard Tristain, and so she would not just slip away like a thief in the night. Even if that would allow her escape, while the thoughts which were forming in her head might lead to her death or recapture.

If she went home to a nation under threat, she could not truly call it her home. If she left her family in danger, she could not truly call herself their daughter.

"I'm going to need a distraction," Louise whispered to herself.

"_Oh, my sweet princess,_" Marisalon said, chuckling, "_the best kind of distraction is one which is an objective in its own right. There's nothing quite like the sight of a foe on her knees, weeping over her scorched warehouses while they try to control the blaze, when you know your hired angyalka assassin is even now slipping through the weakened perimeter to murder one of her closest allies. Even if the assassin fails, why, you've still burned her assets._"

"So what would you suggest?"

The neomah made a pleased noise. "_My lady, why would you need to even need to ask? Find something as volatile and valuable as possible, and blow it up._"

Louise grinned a terrible, predatory grin. "Oh, I have an idea."

* * *

{0}

* * *

That night she rested in a garret. The cold night air crept in through the shutters she had torn open, but Louise did not feel it. Her meal was bread and hard cheese, purchased from a street seller just as they were closing up their barrow, but she paid no attention to it. Kneeling on the hard, dusty ground she prayed, her blade resting on her lap.

"So… killing time?" it asked hopefully.

"Almost," she promised it, looking out the open window. A blocky fortress of grey stone was the dominant feature, rising above the narrow wooden houses. Louise nodded once, decisively, curling up on the old mildew-smelling blankets she had found up here. She needed to get rest. Tomorrow – no, later today – would be a busy day.

In the end, she ended up falling asleep out of boredom, as she waited for the night to pass. She dreamt of fire, of dark stone and of the screaming of the ocean winds as they tore through a burning city. She laughed and she cried, until she could not tell the two apart.

Something grabbed her by the throat, lifting her up with hands which were as hard as iron. Like a toy she was battered around, and all her struggling managed to do was hurt herself.

"Weak," grated the diminutive woman with the unshakeable grasp on her. "Weak. You're a slave to monsters. You defile your own flesh and soul with everything you do. You defile me."

Louise choked out a response, though even she was not sure what she was saying. The woman seemed to grasp the intent well enough, and laughed harshly, grip tightening. "You don't deserve life," she whispered, letting go of Louise, who dropped like a stone.

She impacted with silver sand with bone-breaking force, flesh sloughing off. Louise screamed in agony, before brass and stone unfolded from within to take the place of her torn skin and skeleton.

"You're too late," Princess Henrietta whispered softly in her ear. Louise turned to find her future ruler, her friend chained to the throne of Tristain by great iron shackles. "You let him die."

Louise bit on her lip, tasting metal. "I'm so sorry, your highness," she begged, trying to curtsey and failing when she found she was wearing only bloodstained rags. "I tried my best, but…"

"You killed him. Your blood is on his hands," Henrietta accused. Bitter blue tears wept from her eyes, leaving her flesh burned and raw. "You were too late and he died because of you. Just like you killed your husband. Just like you killed Princess Sophia, and she _trusted _in you."

"I didn't! It… Henrietta, please, trust me! It was the Republicans! Not me! I didn't tell, I swear!"

"Then why are you soaked in their blood?" the princess said flatly. She shifted so a sight of the monstrosity which lurked beneath her throne and which held her chains was visible. "You killed the father of your child, Louise Francoise. It's all your fault. And now Tristain is going to burn because of you."

"It won't! I promise you! Henrietta, I'm going to stop it! I will! I will!"

Henrietta scoffed at her, bitter and spiteful. "Liar."

Louise woke, panting. It was almost pitch-black, with only a faint orange glow painting the shadows a darker shade. Sitting up, she sunk her head onto her hands, and found her eyes wet.

"_Oh, my sweet princess,_" Marisalon said. "_That was not pleasant._"

"It wasn't my fault, was it?" Louise asked softly, her voice a croak. "I… I couldn't have done anything else, could I?"

The neomah cleared her throat. "_Of course not, my lady. And the dream was a mere nightmare. It was not true. After all, that adorable little princess is not even dead, as far as you know. And there is still a chance your husband is alive – and even if he was dead, it would have been the Republicans who killed him, not you. Blame the men who killed the Prince Wales; not yourself. And,_" Marisalon added, a malicious note entering her voice, "_make them suffer for it._"

"But I… I…" Louise took a deep shuddering breath. "Yes," she exhaled. "Yes. I will." Pulling herself to her feet and wiping her eyes, she glanced out the window. "I might as well get started, then," she said.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Under the cover of the early morning, the eastern horizon just acquiring the first hints of the sunrise, a slender man wearing the uniform of the New Model Army stepped neatly up to the outer gate of the Hexagonal Tower. The blocky, squat fortification with its sloping walls and protruding star fortifications was designed to be a vigilant guardian of the shoreline. Its walls were lined with cannon, and the noise of the dragon eyries could be heard from outside the fortification.

However, it was in no way designed to be proof against people who could turn into clouds of immaterial silver sand, as this young man could. He stepped through the outer wall, coalescing on the other side, and continued on his advance. His handsome, clean-shaven features radiated an air of such arrogant confidence that it was hard to accept that he did not know where he was going. The rank insignia of a lieutenant on his arm was enough to convince the tired, low-ranking watchmen who patrolled the fortress that harassing him would get undue attention paid to them, and so he passed with mere salutes.

Another three walls, and the man was walking through the basement of the fortification. He slowed down to a stroll, his hands folded behind his back as he methodically checked the contents of each room. Barrels of swords, of muskets, and everywhere were open containers of various alchemical reagents meant to suck the moisture out of the air. Eventually he found what he was looking for in a cavernous hall which had once been where wines were stored. Now the barrels were of a different nature, and the man smiled as he stabbed his sword through the top of one, prying it open to reveal the coarse black powder within.

And then he sheathed his sword and went along on his way, finding several more such rooms of stored blackpowder. Green fire consumed the interior walls between them, the stone dissolving into ash with a faint scream.

Louise de la Vallière let the shadows melt away from her form, and cracked her knuckles. The light of the burning brand on her forehead matched the fire in her eyes.

* * *

{0}

* * *

On the eastern horizon, the sun was slowly creeping up from under the sparkling sea. Within basement of the Hexagonal Tower, all was hushed, suspenseful. The building silently groaned at the demolition of several interior walls. The bodies of a few unfortunate sentries were stuffed into corners. Blackpowder had been left in a trail leading up to a thick exterior wall. All that was needed was a spark.

A spark that was provided.

Viewed in slow motion, the detonation was beautiful. There was no other way to describe it; the artistry which had gone into it was wonderful. The foundations of the six-sided fort had already been weakened by the demolition of several key underlying walls, and even before that the depots would have caused major damage.

As it was, the explosions rippled upwards, tearing through floors, while at the same time the entire building shuddered and slumped. Walls collapsed inwards as their foundations were torn out from under them, and vast choking clouds of dust were thrown into the air, forming a strange twisted blossom. Flaming detritus painted arcs across the sky, crashing down on the rest of the city to start lesser fires.

The screams of men were drowned out by the shattering of masonry.

And out from the flames and dust strode a figure of silver sand. There was no flesh, no clothing, and no humanity about the whirling pillar. The fires around it burned in vibrant viridian, a halo-corona engulfing the spectre.

Waves rippled across the figure, like wind over the desert dunes, and colour swept in with them. The form of Louise de la Vallière, her buff jacket now somewhat more scorched, pulled itself back together. She blinked heavily, slapping herself on the side of her head with her free hand, and worked her jaw. An onlooker might have thought she was trying to clear her head.

"That was… loud," she muttered to herself, ears ringing.

And then she was off again, running away from the site of her first blow. Amongst the chaos, the fire and the explosions, the attention of others was necessarily somewhat more focussed on the flaming remains of the Hexagonal Tower. However, as she found when she ran into a cavalry patrol galloping full pace through the streets, that was only a relative term. She had barely heard the clatter of their hooves over the ringing in her ears, and only Marisalon's shouted warning was enough for her to throw herself out of the way of the horse which came barrelling towards her.

Shouts trailed after her as she turned heel and fled. Arms pumping, she ducked around a corner and nearly fell on her face when she stepped in a clogged gutter. Louise managed to remain upright – barely – but her flailing had managed to bring her face-first into a solid brick wall. A great clashing shout rang out, men and trumpets crying to the heavens.

Louise blinked. To add injury to insult, she was now bleeding from a gash on the cheek. It wasn't from her impact. That had felt unnaturally soft – a sign of her unusual toughness, no doubt. No, she was bleeding because her sword had bounced off the wall and hit her in the face. Thankfully, that didn't appear to have roused it. The scent of muck and wet vegetation filled her nose as she pulled herself upright using the ivy growing up the wall.

She could hear the clatter of the riders getting sorted behind her. She didn't want to fight them here; it would slow her down and risk drawing more attention. She had to get to the docks, and random brawls didn't serve her sacred duty. Heart pounding like a drum, Louise grabbed at the ivy with one hand and cursed all Albionese soldiers under her breath. Her stomach muscles felt like they were on fire, but she almost danced up the wall, her feet finding rotten mortar under the plants. Her ears were filled with beautiful noise as she clawed her way up the structure. Hooking an ankle up onto the lip of the roof, she launched herself up over the last overhang, and lay flat on her back, panting. The clattering hooves reached where she had been, and she tried not to make a sound. With best luck, they would not notice the green pyre around her, but luck was not something she could rely on.

The girl flexed her hands as down below the soldiers approached. She heard Albionese voices, alarmed and suspicious, but could not understand their words. Had they realised that she had climbed the building? Was a mage preparing to try to burn her alive even now? Then the hooves clattered off, the Republicans riders' voices still raised, and she let herself breathe.

That had been strange. Not the fact that she had somehow managed to scale a vertical wall; such oddities were familiar to her in this warped life she had assumed. No, it was the way that under her hands and feet the stones of the building had been singing to her. She had heard unseen choirs, voices raised in a slow, solemn song.

"_I heard them too,_" Marisalon said, a trace of awe in her voice. "_Those were the songs of the City, King of Kings. Coming from the stone itself." She paused. "You should wait a little before moving on, or at least let your fires die down,_" she observed. "_They won't be very distracted if you are quite so obvious. But if we go slower, then you should be able to stay hidden up high._"

Louise grinned, a predatory smirk etched onto her face. "Well, it's a sign of favour," she said, shaking off her blade. Her eyes drifted to the great fire of the burning fortress and the smoke drowning the city. She could still hear periodic explosions. "Right," she whispered. "That should slow down any invasion. Try loading your cannons with powder when it's on fire, I just dare you!"

"_That probably sounded better in your head, my lady,_" the neomah quipped. "_Also, I feel the tremendously large explosions and the fact that you appear to have set another Albionese town on fire may do more to slow down any potential fleet action than…_"

"Shut up, Marisalon. On to the docks, then. They'll burn too."

* * *

{0}

* * *

The men who came rushing into the Lord Protector's bedroom in Port's Mouth Castle found him already awake, and pulling on his boots. His blond hair was tousled and his nightshirt was tucked into his breaches, but nonetheless he looked awake. Certainly, he was aware enough to have a weapon pointed at the men who had nearly battered down his door.

"My lord!" the lead soldier barked, uncaring of the wand in his face, "there's been an explosion and…"

"I heard the blast from here!" Cromwell snapped back. "What's on fire?"

"It's the Hex, my lord! The blackpowder! The entire tower's up in flames! And the fires are spreading!"

The Lord Protector of Albion groaned, but refused to slump despite the churning pit of nausea in his stomach. It would not do to show such weakness in front of the men. Instead, he – as was his way – got angry.

"What else can you tell me? Are we under attack? Tell me more, man!"

"We don't know, my lord! But there don't seem to be any ships attacking, which," the younger man pursed his lips, "well, which means it's either an accident or sabotage. But my lord, I was told to tell you about this, and I don't really know anything more."

"'Svoid!" Cromwell swore to the heavens. He marked the pentacle on his chest, and bowed his head for that blasphemy, taking a moment to calm his nerves. A sinking suspicion crept into his mind; a product of his thoughtless cursing. "Has there been any sign of green fire?" he said, grabbing his coat from its stand.

"My lord?"

"The fire. Is there any greenness about it?"

The young lieutenant blinked. "Not as far as I can see," he said, confusion in his voice. "It's… you know. Orangish-yellow."

Well. That was something at least, Cromwell thought bitterly. Londinium was suffering from the wicked actions of Louise de la Vallière – suffering greatly. The pit where the Pale Tower had once stood was tainting the fogs, leaving them a sick green-brown which burned at the eyes and lungs. He had no idea what would happen if the noxious acids of the pit got into the river water, and he did not wish to know. Many mages – mages he could have used for this invasion – were working day and night to build a dome over it, but the fumes were corroding away the stone.

He hoped – prayed at night – that the chit responsible had died in the swamps around Londinium or been cut down by some brave soldier.

"Rouse the rest of the high command," he ordered, supressing a yawn. "If they were not woken by the blast, I suspect the healers need to be called in. I cannot have deaf generals. We will need to contain the fire and find out if this is treachery or mere sloppiness."

* * *

{0}

* * *

A shadow flitted among pre-dawn shadows across the rooftops of Port's Mouth, the songs of the city itself filling her mind. Louise's mind was a blur with joy as she watched the panicking ants in the streets below rush around. Her strides were eating up the distance towards the bristle of masts she could see beyond the buildings. She veered off to the left, dropping down onto a lower building and ducking under some laundry before clambering back up a slanted brick roof.

Over the crest, over a low wooden palisade she could see the masts of the fleet. Pausing to gather her breath, Louise sat on the roof, legs dangling over the edge. The chimney behind her smelt of baking bread and woodsmoke, erasing some of the less pleasant smells, and lying back she could see the patchwork sky. There were clouds rolling in from the great North Sea, strangely dark for this time of year.

'Do you know anything about windships?' she asked the neomah in her head. 'Or any other kind of ships, come to mention it?'

"_Sandships need their sails to move_," Marisalon said helpfully. "_They also don't like having extremely large holes put in them by the all-consuming fire of the King._"

'Nothing specific, then.' Louise sighed out loud. 'At least that's all technically correct.'

"_Glad to be of service, my lady._"

'I was hoping you might know how to sail one. Which we could use to, you know. Escape this island.'

"_Ah. Then fairest lady, I must most humbly admit that I know nothing of how to sail any form of ship._"

Louise ground her teeth. She really should have thought of this earlier. Oh well. Now that she could disguise herself, she could hide among the population here. Cripple the fleet first; if she couldn't find a way to get away, she'd just have lie low until normal trade started up again and she could stowaway on a windship. Or she could wait until Albion's path took it over Halkeginia again, grow wings and fly down. Either would work.

Staring down at the street beyond her, she idly wiped her blade on the moss growing on the slate. She watched the passage of men and vehicles below, swinging her legs as she waited for an opportune moment. Taking a deep breath, Louise let herself slip off the roof.

The cries of a perfectly innocent carter were lost in the chaos and confusion of Port's Mouth. Louise de la Vallière, just another black-clad figure among the other soldiers, strode away from the wreckage of the wagon which had been her impromptu landing. She thanked the Lord that she had noticed a vehicle carrying hay, and hadn't been forced to risk finding out what was in some of those canvas-covered wagons.

Still, every last piece of fortune was just evidence that her cause was righteous. And now she was almost there. Wrapped in an air of noble arrogance, she strode up to the wall around the shipyards. No one thought to ask the figure in a New Model Army uniform what they were doing; it wasn't even as if they were trying to get through the gate when they might not have been allowed in.

Of course, Louise de la Vallière did not use gates when they were inconvenient.

On the other side of the wall, she inhaled deeply, smelling the air. The smoke from the burning fortress was the dominant scent, but underneath it was damp wood, tar and the strange lightning-smell of windstones which was both fresh and somehow 'hot'. Tar and windstones. Those might make an interesting combination. At least if they were mixed with some fire.

No. She needed to burn their fleet _first_. If the fleet launched, she wouldn't be able to catch them. She could set fire to the dockyards later. Dockyards couldn't flee from her.

One hand on her blade, Louise picked her way through the warehouses and barracks of the docks. Stepping around an unhitched cart, she followed an indirect path towards the tallest set of masts she could see. They were just peasants and she was a noble serving the righteous order of things. As long as she bore that in mind, as long as she showed no fear, she wouldn't look out of place. They just had to ignore that her buff jacket was torn and burned, that there were a few darker stains on her which were blood, and that her boots were caked from days on the road.

Her hopes were dashed when she encountered the first checkpoint. It was just a few men, tired-looking and nervous, but their hands were on their weapons and she was aware that she was in the centre of a military encampment. She couldn't kill silently; one of them would manage to get a scream off and then the traitors would come swarming in. The masts were still some distance away. She needed to draw them off.

"_Stop justifying to yourself why you want to set that warehouse on fire and just do it, my most beautiful yet somewhat predictable princess,_" Marisalon said tartly. "_Oh! And it would be advisable to cover up some of the incongruities of your disguise with soot and smoke. It would add a most delightful air of verisimilitude to your cries and obvious distress._"

The guards at the barricade were already on edge. They had been woken by the terrifying explosion from elsewhere in the city, and rumours were flying around like mages' fire, setting fresh tales ablaze in their passage. When a blackened woman came running their way, they were already pointing weapons at her.

"Fjoer!" Louise shouted at the men at the barricade at the top of her lungs, and pointed at the nice little blaze she'd started in a warehouse. That was one word she knew in Albionese. People tended to use it quite a lot. She'd picked it up here and there. "Folken! Wetter! Wetter!" Having alerted them, she dashed off, making as much noise and drawing as much attention to the rapidly growing fire as she could.

"_In retrospect, you probably could have walked through one of the warehouses,_" the neomah in her head said.

'Possibly. Someone might have seen me,' Louise thought, a smirk creeping onto her face. 'My, my. That's quite a nice little fire there.' Thunder boomed, and the shutters tore themselves off every window. Lightning danced, blue-white inside the smoke. 'They were very careless leaving those windstones lying around like that.'

"_Under a pile of boxes, inside a locked heavy wooden case, each one wrapped in velvet and inside its own compartment. I'm not even sure how you found them in there._"

'Lying around is lying around, Marisalon. Let's not quibble over the details.'

"_Yes. Details. Of course._"

'As traitors, no wonder they're a little slovenly,' she thought, picking her way past the abandoned barricade. The strange scent of windstones was even stronger now, mixed with the dizzying odour of tar. 'It's just as well they were so incautious.'

Her pace quickened, boots squelching on the muddy cobbles. Her hand was never far away from her blade though she kept it sheathed. Louise kept up her cries of 'Fjoer, fjoer!' as she went, gesturing back the way she had come. Pretending to be out of breath helped in her disguise. No one expected a young woman raising the alarm to be the most verbose.

The last gate was the most fortified, and the watchers most suspicious. Rather than try to bluff her way past the guards, Louise simply stepped through the palisade and into the shipyards themselves. Coalescing again, her eyes widened at the forest of masts and the windships they sprouted from. There were men everywhere, moving with uncertain and undirected panic. She perhaps hadn't appreciated quite how large a ship-of-the-line was. And if she was any judge, it looked like at least some of the anchored ships were preparing to cast off. She didn't know if they were departing for good, or just moving away so saboteurs would have less easy access to them. Either way, it was not acceptable.

The wind picked up, the dawn chill creeping up down her collar. "Keep an eye out, Marisalon," she breathed out, as she set a course towards the largest vessel she could see. It was called the Lexington, at least if the name on the ship was to be trusted. It would be just like the deceitful Republicans to lie about the name of their ship.

On the other hand, it was probably important anyway, given that it was a very large windship with lots of those window things that they poked cannon through when they shot things.

Louise paused for a moment. 'What, no correction?' she thought after no neomah-borne advice came her way.

"_My fairest princess, I believe I have already imparted the depths of my knowledge of boats to you,_" Marisalon said sniffily. "_I don't know what the window things are called. Although I must say, I am a _great _fan of your cannons. So much more range than algarel projectors, and so much cheaper than any of the more effective solutions! I think you should get one. Or several. You'd love one._"

Well, that wasn't very helpful, Louise thought. 'I _meant _as to whether going after the ship is a good idea.'

"_Oh, but of course. It's big, and looks like it will burn well._"

Her heart was beating like a drum as she made her way closer and closer to the Lexington. Would the man with the hook hand approaching try to stop her? Would those boys – even younger than her – rolling the barrel ask what a soot-blackened woman was doing here? Those men over there, sitting by the cradle which held the landed windship, were watching her; why? It was only the loss of the ability to sweat which prevented her forehead from being slick with perspiration.

She heard a shout from behind her, and chose to ignore it. Every step counted. One hand crept down to her blade, knuckles whitening, and she sped up her pace. Ducking between a pair of men carrying a plank between them, she got closer and closer and-

A hand landed heavily upon her shoulder. Blood singing, she removed it and the limb it was attached to without even a thought. A gleeful giddy joy filled her heart as all the tension fled, and she spun and severed the head of the man in the fancy coat in front of her. She shoved the body away and bolted up onto the gangplank as the screaming started. A woman carrying coils of rope was in the way; Louise backhanded her, a gout of green flame trailing as her opponent fell in a great clatter.

And then she was on-board and leaping, arm straightening in a perfect line. Her blade sang out as it tore into the mast, dripping flames down onto the deck. The mast went up like a torch, green fire coruscating upon the blackening wood. The rigging burned in brilliant viridian, silver clouds falling down as ash-rain.

Louise spun, leapt and its aft companion joined it in flames. They couldn't stop her. Anyone who got in her way was so much meat, and the sailors on deck were too occupied at keeping out of the way of the maniac who tore into their ship to try and douse the flames.

Sinking her blade into the ship's hull, Louise let her anger out in a shriek of rage. The sword cut through the polished wood as easily as it would have parted soft butter, and from the edges of the wound green fire licked out, consuming the keel of the vessel. The wood whimpered and moaned as silvery ash fell away from the opening gash, blanks buckling and baking to the soft patter of nails popping out. Legs pumping, Louise threw herself over the side of the doomed ship, wreathed in burning light. A man screamed in pain as he was used as a landing.

She acted instinctually, and sprung up from the ground, blade arcing down to split a rider's head in two. The body fell off the horse, and the beast went crazy, rearing up only for the second and third riders to collide with it. Men and women screamed, barking orders in the Albionese tongue, and Louise took the chance to hack at the legs of a second horse. Silently she apologised to the poor animal even as she ran the rider through; it wasn't the animal's fault its master was unworthy of it.

A bolt of ice lanced out from the glaive-staff of one of the riders; Louise caught it on her sword. Shattered ice pattered from her clothing. Snarling, she thrust her hand towards him, and the howling sandstorm blinded the man. He screamed, gripping onto his reigns, but Louise was no longer paying attention to him. She twirled on one foot, slashing low, and another horse fell in the confusion, collapsing onto its rider. Then she was off, fleet feet flitting through the chaos as she headed towards the next nearest vessel.

The death of the Lexington resembled nothing less than the fall of some great beast, brought down by hunters. The burning masts tore themselves from unsteady planks. One of the central ones fell forwards, crashing through the decks like a titanic spear until it had impaled what once it had guided. Another leaned crazily sideways, swaying unsteadily like a drunk man, before ripping itself completely from its charred and weakened anchorings and falling sideways to slam into another vessel. And soon that ship was burning, and another, and another, as the bonfire spread and flickering viridian light illuminated the smoke-choked docks.

Louise laughed and laughed until she cried, surrounded by an ever-growing circle of death.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Port's Mouth blazed with the funeral pyre of the fleet of the Holy Republic of Albion. A warehouse exploded in a thunderclap, discharging windstones falling as autumnal leaves. Some detonated where they landed, sparking more flames which added to the conflagration. To the east, the inferno of the Hexagonal Tower was the centre of a rose blossom of lesser fires. To the west, mages desperately tried to set up fire breaks as golems trampled out smouldering roves and water drenched houses.

Oliver Cromwell slammed his hand into the wall. "Why is everything on fire!" he screamed out, in an outburst of pure rage. "Who is doing this?" He glared at the senior officers, as if they would have answers for him. There were none to be provided yet.

The soldiers who would have been part of the invasion fleet were spread over the city, trying to contain the spreading infernos. Too many had been close to the Hexagonal Tower, which had possessed sizeable barracks and so the blast had already taken out too many good men and women.

And the whispers and rumours. Founder, the rumours. Despite the best efforts of the Holy Republic, tales of what had happened and was happening in Londiunium had spread among them. He already had heard that some officers had been… been _infected _by the dark tales which were spreading through the men, and the Fifth Light Foot, who had been in Londiunium, had refused to move out from their barracks. This was not something he needed right now. Not when he was trying to save a town and his invasion.

"Horelworth reports that the Second have managed to get firebreaks set up to the north of the Hex."

"It's worse in the east, though. Are you sure we can't get the dragoons in the air?"

"Not a chance. The fire dragons are… excited by the blaze. We really don't need them going into heat on top of everything else."

"Too true, too true."

"My lords! My lords! News from the docks!"

Cromwell glanced up from the map he was brooding over. He had only been half-listening to the babble of the officers. They had their jobs to do, and he would let them do them. But the newcomer, the soot-stained young woman who had just burst into the room they had commandeered – what was going on here? Who was she? And for that matter, there was a clamour outside which sounded like there had been some controversy over her entry.

"What's happening?" Wortlemere, commanding officer of the Second, demanded. "What is it?"

"Is the Lord Protector here?" the young woman asked, gasping for breath.

Cromwell narrowed his eyes. "Yes; spit it out," he said.

"Word from… from Hartlen," the messenger managed, pushing her sweaty black hair away from her eyes as she hastily bowed. "The harbourmaster. The docks are ablaze! The Lexington is destroyed, and so are many other ships! I saw them burning green, sir! With my own two eyes! And there's green fire everywhere and…"

"Everyone! Silence!" Cromwell yelled. "Get your men, all of them! Every single one of them! I want every last soldier you have! March them on the docks, surround them! Let no one in and no one out! Get the dragoons airborn! Find the source of the green fire and _kill it dead!_"

"Oliver, the rest of the city is on fire and if we…"

"Let it burn!" he snapped. "_She's _here!"

"But, my lord…"

"Let it burn!" He took a deep breath, and tried to restore order to his thoughts. "The… the spirit-kin who destroyed the Pale Tower is here!" he said. "Take everything! Kill her! For what she did to Londinium! And it was her who blew up the blackpowder here and now she's burning the docks! We need to stop her right now!" He glared around. "Move! Get started!"

He needed her dead. It was the only way to restore order. If he could prove it was a Tristainian saboteur, if he could prove that she was a spirit-get or Protestant in the middle of one of the mightiest families of that wrecked nation – he had to do it.

"What are you waiting for, you fools?" he yelled.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The stone gate burned, ash carried away on the howling winds, and Louise de la Vallière stepped through the gap she had so conveniently made. The brilliant light of her soul wreathed her, fat clumps of brazen and viridian flame falling from the bonfire-pyre to burn in terrible glory behind her. She brushed her free hand against the wall as she made her way down the path preceded by fleeing, weeping soldiers, and left a black trail of basalt wherever she touched.

She knew why they fled. Their morale was no less destroyed than the fleet she had left behind her. The tired, scared, surprised soldiers who had been standing watch were routed. They fled from the diminutive figure who strode through their streets. They fled from her burning eyes which were a hole into an inner sun, and from the inhuman monstrosity wrought in her beautiful carapace and her crown of metal-sheathed bone that spouted from her skull. And above all, they fled the death which awaited them if they stood in her way. If they had stood together, if they had fought her, maybe they could have brought her down. But they would not do so. Each man and woman among them feared too much for their own lives to do so, and so they fled.

Trailing blood from her blade, leaving crimson footsteps which blackened and charred in her wake, she set off again. There was one more objective she had set herself. One last target which had to burn; one last knife in the gut of Albion. Then she could think about escape.

Before her lay one of the colossal stone blocks which rooted the chains which anchored the Wihgtarisle to the main body of Albion.

"_I've seen bigger,_" Marisalon said.

Louise forced herself to grin. She was feeling exhausted, and pain was an ignored-yet-present note in her thoughts. "You've seen larger giant stone blocks anchoring floating islands?" she said, jabbing one finger in the direction of a musket-armed man and leaving him screaming, sand-flayed, on the floor.

"_But of course, my princess. Hmm; I do believe you will wish to attack whatever anchors the anchor-block. That is most likely magically reinforced to a frightful level. Whether this will dislodge the island… well, it depends on how much redundancy they have. But it will not be easy to replace, and they will want to do so._"

The girl breathed in, tasting the smoke. She looked around, trying to take in the area without anyone attacking her. At least there was plenty of light, from the bonfire which enveloped her. There were great stone spikes thrust into the ground, each one the height of a building, surrounding the giant block. They were probably doing something, so if she destroyed them, perhaps that might weaken the anchor.

Louise's ears perked up. Over the noise of the devastation, she heard the distinctive noise of dragon wings. Nothing else flew like them, and she had been half-expecting dragoons to show up ever since she had set the shipards ablaze. "Watch for them," she muttered to the neomah in her head, and sprinted for the stone spikes, head raised high.

The first gout of fire came far sooner than she had expected. Founder! Only the sudden orange in the green light of her overflowing soul warned her, and then there was nothing but light. Up and down the dragons swept their fire, blast-furnace breath melting the pretty gardens which once had lain around the anchor stone. This was the true danger of the Albionese dragoons revealed; the force which could melt a regiment where they stood if they lacked the mages or artillery to guard against such a threat.

A cloud of inchoate silver sand escaped from the inferno, only reforming when she was behind the solidity of one of the stones she had come here to destroy. Louise sucked in the too-hot air, choking on it. Even away from the fire, she could feel herself slowly cooking, a loaf in a too-hot oven. And with her own fire enveloping her, she couldn't escape from them.

Lips moving, she prayed to the Founder, to God, to Malfeas. She asked for success, for protection, to simply escape from this.

"_We got greedy,_" Marisalon said sadly. "_We shouldn't have tried to destroy an entire sky island._"

Louise was inclined to agree, but not was not the time for regrets. Now was the time for not dying. The breath of the dragons couldn't reach around the massive stone block, but they knew she was here, and… she threw herself down as hunting orbs of flame came seeking her way. They barely missed her, and splashed harmlessly against the massive edifice of the anchorstone.

A thump. A second one. Louise sprang up, weapon at the ready and came face to soot-blackened teeth with the open maw of a dragon. It radiated heat, and the breaths of the great beast pushed and pulled at her. The metal plating around its skull, to protect it from shot, was red-hot close to the mouth.

It inhaled.

She sprung up like an uncoiling spring, vaulting over the nose of the beast. The scent of scorched flesh wafted from her hand where she had touched the metal, but the pain was a distant thing compared to the hunger of the blade in her other hand. There was a crackle and whoosh as the dragon exhaled, but Louise was already beyond it. Her sword arm extended, aimed of the throat of the rider.

Who whipped her own sword-wand into the way of the blow, deflecting it. Then Louise's body hit the seated woman, and the two of them fell, tangled up in the reins and the bridling.

Louise rolled as she hit the ground with a clatter of trumpets, and rose on one toe, bringing her blade around in a pirouette guard. The rider was less effete about manners, and severed her binds with a muttered word, landing heavily. Her dragon coiled around her, to protect its master from the green-burning monster approaching. A second dragon roared, and Louise dodged the fireballs from the mage on its back, each one aimed to force her to back away from the fallen earth mage.

The other woman flicked out her arm with a barked word, and the pavement beneath Louise's feet was suddenly unstable. She tried desperately to regain her balance, and was not quite fast enough to avoid the serpent-like tendril of rock which latched around her legs. She yelled in pain as it began to squeeze down. A sand-flicker, and she was free, but she was trying to fight both the dismounted rider and two dragons and she was too tired and too slow to rack all of them. The least that could be said was that she was in too close for the landed dragons to burn her, but they still had claws, teeth and tails.

It was one of the stones from the fallen rider which send her flying backwards with a cracking sound and a jolt of pain from her chest. Tumbling along the ground, she scrabbled for grip and managed to grab on just short of the low wall which marked the point where the land became the sky. She gasped for air, something coldly noting that it was probably another broken rib. Each breath was liquid, bubbling in her chest.

Looking up, she could see two dragons and two mages facing her on the ground, and many more dragoons in the air. Some were riding fire dragons, others were riding wind dragons, and there were yet more fliers present, holding back for now but ready to move in if necessary.

She couldn't fight them all. Not in this state; maybe not at all. Either they would kill her, or she would be taken captive and she would _never _fall into the hands of the Sheffield-thing again. Never never never.

Louise had already manifested her inner strangeness and the wings had not come. There would be no flight for her; no escape that way. And she felt exhausted, in the bone-deep way which meant she soon would be able to do little more. She took a step back, felling the wall behind her, gasping for breath.

She looked to the east, and the light of the sun which seeped through the smoke and flames. She felt the cold light of her soul burning all around her, seeping into the world and twisting it. She could hear the crackle and roar of the flames. She could taste the fear of all those terrified soldiers who dared stand against her.

Louise de la Vallière smiled up at the dragoons. She spread her arms wide. And she released the flaying sands as she let herself fall backwards.

* * *

{0}


	23. 22: The Beginning

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Chapter 22: The Beginning **

* * *

{0}

* * *

Fire.

Light.

Wind.

Impact.

Blackness.

Airlessness.

Nothingness.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Seagulls cried out in the summer sky, dark silhouettes against the blue. Their screeches joined the crash and trickle of the waves as they beat against slanted layers of rock. The islet – a small outcropping of sea-worn stone – rose from the shallow sandy waters of the Great North Sea, north of the deep water of the Soluente Depths which brushed against the coast of Gallia, Tristain and Germania. Those with eyes to see could just about make out the foundations of stone buildings dug into its slopes; a legacy of its fall from Albion.

Since then, the currents of the Great North Sea had built up sandbanks around the obstacle, and so the rocky spire was a nesting place of seabirds overlooking a detritus-laden reef. And now another piece of flotsam had washed up on this little island. One quite different to anything it had ever seen before.

Tattered, burned and bruised, Louise de la Vallière groaned. A haze of pain fogged every thought and left her gasping. She could not see through one eye, and what she could see was painted in shades of grey. She was starving, her stomach gnawing at her. And it hurt to breathe.

It was a familiar feeling.

"Woo!" the sword clasped in a death-grip in her hand declared, quite ruining the moment. "That was a wild ride, partner! Let's do that again sometime! I love-love-love the way you feed me all that fire, but now I'm all tired again! Nap time! Wake me up when there's some more killing!"

Gritting her teeth, she forced the pain down, out into the hollow space in her mind which seemed like a bottomless cauldron for agony. The colour returned to her vision, and she managed to roll over, to stare up at the sky. It was very blue, she thought idly, as one hand went to feel her left eye.

It felt puffy and swollen, and the distance awareness of pain in her mind amplified when she touched it. It was still there, though, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't want to lose an eye.

Oh, and the neomah in her head was shouting at her.

"_You!_" Marisalon shrieked inside her head. "_You! You! You… you… you…_"

"You said that already," Louise croaked, spitting sand from her mouth.

"_Well, I would have been shouting at you earlier, but you weren't even dreaming! Did you let the other thing in your head take over? I bet you did, didn't you! What possibly possessed you to do that? That in general, I mean! Why did you throw yourself off the island? What_ possibly _made it seem like a good idea?_"

"We're… alive, aren't we?" Louise said. She briefly considered her options. No, her soul wasn't in the sun, having the weight of its accumulated sins burned from it by the grace of God. That meant that she was alive. And she certainly didn't want to become a sinful and wicked ghost. The water around her legs was soothing and peaceful, the salt pleasant against the open cuts and grazes she had.

Wait, no, Louise realised. Her flesh had scabbed over in metal and stone. Her shins, from what she could see of them, were streaked with black stone. Her left hand, where she had touched the superheated metal on the head of the dragon, was now skinned in shining brass. It was flesh-warm to the touch, and covered in ridges and whorls.

It was pretty, she thought idly, in her dreamlike half-lucid state. Maybe everything was just a dream. No, wait, it was too pleasant for a dream. If it was a dream, she wouldn't be able to force down the pain.

"_Oh no! No you don't try to pretend it was part of your plan all along! I'm in your wretched head! We had a perfectly good plan! You wreck the docks, and in the chaos we could have got away, then hidden ourselves in your shadow-disguise. Then it would just have been a simple matter of hiding on a ship headed down to your continent! At no point – no point ever, I stress – did you plan to throw yourself over the edge!_"

Louise curled up, prodding at her legs with a brass-covered fingertip. She couldn't feel any broken bones there. That was good. A broken leg would be really inconvenient. "It wasn't my plan originally," she said. Her throat ached, and she coughed, hacking up black phlegm. "I had to improvise."

"_Improvise? Improvise? That's a terrible improvisation! You didn't even try to slow your fall!_"

"Don't be silly," Louise managed. "Everyone knows that any… any mage worth anything can levitate." She swallowed. She had expected the ache of regrets that she could not fly in that manner, but it wasn't there. "So I had to hit the water. Full speed. And then hold my breath as long as I could, as deep as I could. Otherwise they'd have just followed the fact that I was all green and on fire."

"_That was a terrible plan! From now on, I'm going to do the planning! You just threw yourself off the island without a single plan in your vacant little head!_"

Groaning, she pulled herself up the sandy spar. "I had a plan," she said, once her legs were out of the water. Louise frowned. Her arm was sort of warning her about something. Oh yes. She'd broken it again. The same one as last time. It must have not healed properly, or been fully healed, or something like that.

How annoying.

It was a good thing that she was only intellectually aware of pain at the moment, because right now she'd be screaming from that. Well, that and the several broken ribs. Gosh, they were going to hurt when she paid attention to things. Her mother had always told her that a broken rib was a potentially lethal injury, but Louise felt from experience they were more of an inconvenience than anything else. It wasn't like a broken limb. Still, it couldn't be a good sign that she could feel that three of them were bending in a way that solid bone shouldn't.

Oh well. She'd had worse.

"_Your plan?_" Marisalon said in a dangerously calm voice.

"I was planning that the dragons would try to attack me in mid-air, so I could steal one of them," Louise said, running her mobile hand through her short-cropped hair. It was encrusted in salt and sand, and felt vile. She spat a mix of smoke-blackened phlegm and blood on the ground. "Only they didn't. But it _could _have worked."

That set the neomah off into incoherent rage again, so in the meantime Louise decided to do something more productive.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The sun was mid-way down its long, slow descent towards the western horizon when she straightened up, smiling to herself in quiet satisfaction as she dressed. There had been a fair amount of detritus washed up on the sandbanks around this isle, and even more things that could be salvaged by diving. Swimming with a broken arm had been a bit of an annoyance, until she had found some old gnarled driftwood and splinted the limb with seaweed and old rope.

She was no longer thirsty, either. Seawater now tasted perfectly fresh and potable to her. It wasn't that she couldn't taste the salt; she could. It was just that her body was telling her that it was something she should drink and that salt wouldn't taste bad or be bad for her. She had given in, and felt rather better for it. The stomach full of water muted the hunger pangs for a while, but she could feel them waiting to resurface.

Having to periodically get out of the water to whimper in agony with greyed vision when the pain slipped out of the depths where she had been forcing it down had only been a minor inconvenience, in retrospect. At the time, of course, it had been rather more pressing.

Louise sat under her crude shelter; waterlogged sea canvas sitting as a functional roof, and thought. Idly, she rubbed her broken arm, feeling the hard stony growths under her skin where the bone was already beginning to knot together. On one hand, she really didn't want to turn into a girl made of stone and metal. On the other, broken hand, she wished she'd developed this power earlier. It would have been so much more convenient if she had healed this fast when she'd been in the swamps.

Should she get a fire going? Warmth would be nice. But she couldn't risk anyone seeing a fire from the air and coming down to investigate. Maybe she should just go and lie in one of the shallow pools of water scattered across this rocky place. She felt better in the water.

No, Louise decided, she should find a place where she could hide a fire from any Albionese searchers who might be looking for her body – or her. A hot meal would do her good, and in truth she wasn't looking towards trying to eat some of the shellfish and seafood she had caught and thrown into one of the rockpools while they were still raw. Civilised people didn't eat raw fish. You might catch… well, she probably wouldn't catch anything, but it was still nasty. But she was hungry enough that if she didn't eat soon, she would change her mind. So she should eat now. Yes.

Dragging the baby sea dragon which had tried to eat her on her last swim, she went off to see if there was a convenient cave or other shelter to cook it in.

Her search of the interior of the island – such as it was – was a brief one. There was only a single spire of rock, eroded by the waves and wind, coated in bird-droppings, so it did not take too long. There were a few narrow crevices where rock had fractured, but nothing that would do more than keep the wind off her. None of them were deep enough to really get a fire going without risking it being seen.

Louise stared at the largest shallow cave, resting the dead sea dragon on the ground. Maybe if barricaded up the entrance, she could hide the light? She almost went to ask Marisalon, but the neomah wasn't talking to her at the moment. She would have to find her own way of doing it. Tilting her head, Louise stepped closer. "The rock layers are sloping," she muttered to herself. "The ones underneath, they're… oh, what did Eleanore call them? Rocks like sandstone. But the ones on top are granite." She bit her lip, tasting metal. She squatted down by the overhang, feeling the rough chalky rocks with the flesh-sensitive metal of her mobile hand. "I'm sure this must have fallen off Albion. You're not meant to get granite over the top of… sedimentary, that was the word."

Decisively, she nodded once and dragged the dead dragon away from the overhang. Turning around, she returned to the rock, took a step back and a deep breath, and then punched the sedimentary rock with all her strength.

The fire did the rest. Rubble crashed, rock-ash rose, and stones screamed. And when the clouds had cleared, the ragged girl with the brass fists was left standing before a hovel-sized hollow.

"Good enough," Louise said. She ran her fingers over the fire-polished walls. "Yes. This will do nicely."

* * *

{0}

* * *

Outside, an unseasonably chill wind unexpected by any weather mage was blowing down from the Great North Sea. Strange lights were seen in the clouds above, and lightning flashed without thunder. Such things were not rare when Albion was in the sky, but this summer they were more frequent, and subtly different.

But in the cave, its entrance blockaded up with rubble and driftwood, all was different. The smell of cooking meat and smoke filled the little bubble of light and warmth. Sea dragon flesh sizzled against a roughly-hammered sheet of sea-greened metal resting on rocks above the fire. Firelight danced against the shining walls.

From certain angles and certain lights, the reflections cast were not of the cave in which Louise de la Vallière sat.

Louise stuck her hands in the fire, to clean off the stains of her butchery, and then sat back. "Well, isn't this nice?" she said with false cheer to the sword resting beside her.

The blade yawned. "I don't like how you didn't stab the dragon to death," it said accusingly. "You should have taken me swimming with you."

"I only have one working arm," Louise said, wincing as she ran her fingers over the splint. She was letting it hurt at the moment, because she didn't want to accidentally damage herself more without pain to tell her. And it was tiring forcing it down.

"And the best possible use for an arm is holding a sword to stab things with," it argued back.

Rather than argue back, Louise reached out, and flipped over the hunk of flesh on the hot metal plate. The sizzle changed in tenor, and she brought back her hand, working her jaw. "It doesn't smell as nice as the sea dragon I've had before," she said critically.

She was lying. She could taste the meat. It was very strong smelling, and just turning it over meant she could taste it at the back of her mouth as strongly as if she'd just taken a bite out of it and… and it was wonderful. Sea dragon was a rare delicacy – indeed, it was only permitted to the nobility. She couldn't lower her standards to eating raw meat like this, though.

"It's kind of salty. And more than a bit gamey." Looking at the small pile of shellfish piled on a concave, water-filled rock, she considered her options. "I should probably… I wonder how I could boil water? Hmm. Maybe if I got some of the fat from the dragon, I could try frying the fish things? But they'd just close." She frowned. "How do you cook shellfish beyond boiling them, anyway?"

"Try cutting them open," her sword suggested.

"Not helping." Louise tilted her head. "Maybe, when my arm is working again, I can see if I can catch some langoustines. The Albionese don't eat enough seafood. It's their fault for living up on that godforsaken island."

Louise loved langoustines.

The fire crackled, salt-encrusted wood burning with a smoky flame. Louise leaned back, resting her hands in the rock-ash which made up the floor. She slowly unfastened her buff-jacket to the waist, wincing each time she knocked one of her many scabs or jarred her broken bones. The garment was filthy, bloodied and sea-drenched. She could taste the salt and dried gore, and it only made her hungrier.

Louise flinched and shuddered. Her reactions weren't right. She shouldn't be feeling hungry from this, and she had to blame the conditions she had endured for that. She really needed to wash it soon – and the clothes underneath were barely in a better state. But at the moment, all she cared about was food. She would see if she could find any fresh water to wash things in some other time.

"I'm hungry all the time," she whispered to herself. "I… the last proper meal I had was all the way back in New Castle. That had… proper noble food. Not peasant dreck or whatever I could find." She felt her eyes burning, but no tears came. "I hate having to live like this. Filthy and hungry and… and I hate it! I hate it!"

"I know what would cheer you up!" the sword said happily,

"If you say 'stabbing', I'll… I'll leave you on this island!" Louise snapped.

The sword was silent. Outside, she heard birds calling, and the howl of the wind. Maybe she could go out and hunt down some of the gulls. They'd be an easy target for the sand, and she could cook them too. Or maybe even eat them raw. Birds weren't fish, right? The gnawing feeling in her gut pushed her, reminding her of how long ago her last meal had been. It had been that inadequate meal in the inn where she'd killed those guards, hadn't it? Well, it was natural for her to be hungry. She had no idea how her body was making metal and stone as it healed, but that couldn't be easy.

Her eyes drifted back to the half-cooked meat. Well, it couldn't be that bad to have it medium-rare, could it? She reached out with both hands, intending to just tear off a small amount as best she could with her broken arm.

As soon as Louise touched the meat, all the hunger within her welled up and burst. Fingers coated in browed gore, she tore it apart, gorging on it with a terrible frenzy. She could taste it on her fingers. She could taste the pain and fear of the dragon's dying moments as her hands closed around its neck. She could taste the burnt blood and the tinge of green brassy fire from the killing blow.

And it was wonderful.

Mouth dripping with juices, hands tasting of iron and salt, she ate until she could eat no more. She thrust her hands onto the fire to clean them, and lay back to digest her meal. Sated, she sighed. She might as well get it over and done with.

"Have you calmed down yet?" Louise asked Marisalon.

"_Have I calmed down? Have I calmed down? How can you even ask that? As if in some way, it's my fault that you're crazy? I'm not the irrational one who threw herself off a floating island, thank you very much! Have I calmed down, you ask?_" The neomah drew a deep breath. "_A bit,_" she admitted. "_Unspeakable colour, don't scare me like that. I really don't want to die, thank you very much._"

"Neither did I," Louise said, resting her hand on her bloated stomach. She took a deep breath. "I didn't do it for no reason, you know. I wasn't going to let them take me. Even if they were willing to take me alive… you know what we heard about what happened in Londinium."

"Awesome stuff!" her sword contributed. "I don't mind only hearing one side of these conversations, just so you know! It's much better getting to make up the other side myself!"

"Shut up, you stupid sword," Louise said. She was feeling too full to really put much emotion into her words. "But do you really think they'd be at all nice to someone who blew up that wretched place which apparently killed a bunch of Albionese? Traitors like that can't be trusted to follow the proper conduct. They didn't in the first place. And that's even before I ended up back in the hands of the Sheffield thing, which," she shuddered, "never again," she whispered. "Not after what I saw down in the basement. She'd do some of those things to me. Even if I had died in the fall, it would be cleaner and faster that way."

The neomah grumbled a bit. "_Fine,_" she eventually said. "_I will concede that you were not being completely stupid about things. But you have to get a better grasp of your limits._"

Louise let out an aggrieved sigh. "How am I meant to do that?" she protested. "They change all the time! My body keeps on changing on me! Everything tastes stronger than anything I've been able to taste before, and I was tasting its pain! I was tasting the colour its skin had been! I could tell it was a sea dragon from the taste and knew what it looked like! This isn't how taste works!"

She glared at her brass-palmed hands. "And they're healing in metal! I… I don't want my body changing on me like this! It's like when my monthlies started! I can't predict anything! I… I feel lost, sometimes," she managed, her voice soft. "I… I don't want my body doing things without a reason. At least when I became a woman, it happens to everyone. This? No one knows what's happening. Not even you."

"_No, you are blessed beyond my comprehension, my lady,_" Marisalon said.

Louise set her jaw mulishly. "Well, maybe I don't want to be," she muttered.

"_Fair princess, you are beautiful in the eyes of the mighty, and their nature suffuses you. Welcome these changes. They better you._"

"No!" Louise's voice was harsh, whip-crack fast. "No. I will _not _permit it. What… what if I say 'no'? What if I don't want my flesh to turn to m-metal and stone when I g-get hurt?"

"_You won't permit it? My fair princess, the power of Those Who Made the World flows through you is a blessing, a gift, not some bane,_" Marisalon said, sounding shocked. "_You need not fight it._"

"This isn't what I wanted!" To her shame, Louise felt on the edge of tears, and she knew she would have been crying a few months ago. But she couldn't cry any more. "I… I h-hate not knowing what happens with my body. I hated my monthlies and I hate the way I'm short and… and I hate it all!"

"_There there,_" Marisalon said. "_I know it must be hard for you. Why, myself I enlightened myself twice over and above those mewling newborns which make up my kindred, and each time I reached for more power, more self-hood, I felt myself become what I was not. I welcomed it, though. I do not understand why it scares you._"

"Mages aren't meant to have this kind of thing happen," Louise whispered, "and that's all I ever wanted to be."

They sat there in uncomfortable silence for a while, listening to the crackle of the fire and the howl of the wind like that.

"_If you are at all interested,_" the neomah began slowly, "_my fair princess, I do believe that I have developed certain thoughts on the natures of the changes to your flesh and the powers which spring from them. Merely from observation and my knowledge of the ways of the City, of course; this is not some blessed wisdom passed to me by mightier ones than I._"

Louise rubbed her eyes. "Go on," she said.

"_I have, in the time I have spent watching you, come to the following conclusion; to wit, it is stress, trauma, and other such things which prompt these changes in you. It is not study, not practice which builds them up. No, my fair lady, your flesh partakes more of the power of Those Who Built the World the greater the need. Consider the latest changes to your sense of taste, the capacity to discern things you could not before about the things you devour. My princess, I do believe that is directly related to your extended hunger and irregular meals ever since you got to Albion._

_"Take too the changes to your flesh. Your skin is as armour, you feel no pain when you force yourself to ignore it, even now you heal with the terrible and mighty flesh of the King of the Creators himself. Did this process not start with you cutting yourself with your nails and wanting for that to no longer happen, and then progress to you being shot, stabbed, clawed at by Dead monstrosities, and jumping off a flying island?_"

"Well…"

"_That was a rhetorical question, oh princess of poor self-preservation. Yes, I am somewhat aggrieved about it still,_" Marisalon said snippily. "_The fire of the King comes from your need to destroy; the secrets of the waters of the Great Mother came from your time in the swamp; the sly evasiveness of the Shadow of All Things were born of your captivity and attempts to escape, and…_" the neomah shuddered, "_my princess, I fear for myself that you touch the ways of the Silent Wind when you take joy in killing. She above all others is terrible in her sacred might._"

"So…" Louise wetted her lips, tapping her fingers against the sand as she thought. "You're saying that this happens as a response to stress and trauma. Well. Hmm. That might explain why the changes seemed to have happened faster ever since I set off for Albion." She winced. "This has not been a nurturing experience," she said wryly. "Painful, yes. Traumatic, yes. And… and it's forced me to do things I've never done before. That I never ever thought I _could _do before." Louise took a deep shuddering breath. "And you're saying that the more extreme the circumstance I'm put in, the faster things will change?"

"_To aid you in your survival, yes, my princess. I do not doubt that the burning of Port's Mouth and the fall from the edge of the island was what has led to your flesh to turn itself to brass and stone._" Marisalon hummed to herself. "_Why, my princess, it seems your body agrees with me on the limits of your capacity to keep yourself intact. How reassuring!_"

Her body was a traitor, Louise was forced to conclude. "So when I get back home, it should… slow down?" she said. "Stop changing like this?"

"_If my ideas are right, it will certainly slow down – or at least, it might change only in ways to aid you in society,_" Marisalon said cautiously. "_I cannot say for sure, but I do doubt that even you could put yourself in more danger at the court of your beautiful Princess Henrietta than you have managed in the past few weeks._"

"All the more reason to get home, then," Louise said firmly, hugging her knees. Her stomach made a grumbling, growling, churning noise.

There was silence again.

"_Something occurs to me,_" Marisalon said slowly. "_Are your sea dragons safe to eat?_"

Louise had thought they were. She had certainly eaten some before.

In considerably smaller portion sizes.

And prepared by trained chefs.

And properly cooked.

"I appreciate you trying to change the topic," Louise said uneasily, "but I would rather not have to worry about what I have just eaten."

Maybe she shouldn't have eaten the organs. Now that she thought about it – albeit somewhat fuzzily – she remembered that there was some reason that wind dragons were safe to eat, as long as you didn't eat certain bits of the body. Something about them having tiny windstones which formed in their organs from the magic they used to fly or something like that.

What happened if you ate waterstones, she wondered.

"_… well! I see we may well find out! Honestly, I leave you alone for a few hours and you manage to do something like this._" The neomah sighed. "_You might as well try to sleep it off. Or you might want to see if you can throw it up right now._"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise tried her best to empty her stomach out in the cold and dark, and then returned to the cave feeling rotten. Perhaps it was not enough, because she was feeling decidedly queasy. In the end, she lay down in her little hidey-hole, head swimming.

Later, she was not sure if she slept, or if she was merely hallucinating. Nightmares or sickness visions; perhaps it made no difference. Either way, as the fire died down and the walls of the cavern darkened, she became increasingly convinced that the stone ash she slept on was silver sand. Sitting up, Louise picked up a handful and let the flakes drift down between her fingers. The top layer was painfully hot, but underneath it was freezing.

She looked around. Above her, a black, starless sky. To her left, barren desolation. To her right, barren desolation. Before and behind her, nothing but silvery sand. All around her, unseen yet all too clear, colourless green ideas slept furiously beneath the parched earth.

Louise rose. "Marisalon," she called out. There was no response, even when she tried again.

That usually meant only one thing. These was not her memories. The other, strange woman was bleeding through, recollections from someone long dead or from some far-away place forcing themselves into her mind. Yet for all that, Louise did not feel different. She felt like herself.

Louise laughed bitterly, staring down at her brass-palms. Like herself. Yes. To avoid sinking onto depression again, she gazed around and noticed a figure standing alone amidst the sand. The horizon seemed lighter in that direction, so she headed that way.

Before too long, she could recognise her own face cast in brass, with eyes that burned the green of her fire. Louise stared at the brazen maiden, and the brazen maiden stared back. Even compared to last time, she was more real, more solid, Louise thought – though that may have just been compared to the unreality of everything else around her.

"What do we want?" the brazen maiden demanded, hands on her hips.

Louise glared back. She almost went to make the same gesture, but a flare of pain from her arm reminded her that it was still broken. "So, what kind of crazy madness babbling rubbish am I going to have to put up with from you this time?" she asked the not-her. "And… and put some clothes on!"

The brazen maiden snorted. "Why should we care what irrelevancies our lessers think of us, or for the petty dictates of inferior beings? We are beautiful, and we know it. We should be proud of our appearance, not ashamed. Others should love us and fear us."

"That wasn't an answer! That was a demonstration! We're… I mean _I'm _not going to stand here and be lectured by you!" Louise retorted.

"We are becoming more," the brazen maiden said. "We can see it. Our flesh is no longer weak. Our fire burns cities and weapons of war alike. We made those stupid Albionese traitors pay for daring to treat us this way. We will not listen to the blandishments of the others. They are stupid and weak. We know that, don't we? That is why we have nearly claimed more power. Power enough to get off this wretched, stupid, useless little island."

"Y-you can do that?" Louise asked, the wind taken from her sails.

"We can do that," the not-her agreed, in a breath which smelt of hot metal. "We have already begun it. But we must choose to accept it."

Louise drew a deep breath. The memories of her conversation with Marisalon were still fresh in her memory. The neomah had said that her magic changed her the more trauma she was under, the worse the stress and suffering. It was almost like how skin toughened to form callouses. And, Louise suddenly remembered, her mother had said much the same thing about how her magic always came through stronger when she was angry or stressed.

She put that thought from her mind. No normal mage turned into a moving statue unless they wanted to. When her mother tore people apart as a hurricane of razor wind, it was her choice. They didn't have it happen just when they healed. Who knew what would happen to her if she stayed on this island much longer? Maybe she'd deform until she was some sea creature, able to swim home. Maybe the hunger would get to her and she'd start budding mouths all over her body, to eat the rocks and strain wriggling things from the water. Maybe… maybe she would just stop having to breathe when she turned to crystal, and would walk home across the bottom of the Soulente Depths. Or a thousand other things, all writ in the forms of the not-hers.

She didn't much like the idea of that.

"What do you want?" she asked bluntly. "What'll this do to me? And… and what are you even talking about? What you say will work to get us out of here?"

"It will cost us weakness," said the brass maiden. "It will give us strength. Weakness into strength; the great work of the souls. It's our choice. It's always our choice."

Louse went to bite her nails, and stopped herself. She wouldn't show weakness in front of this not-her. She suspected that there was something hidden, something she was missing. Some cost that would come later, perhaps, or simply the not-her might not be telling her everything.

But she would pay a price anyway, if she stayed here – and a higher one if the Albionese started searching the islets which scattered this shallow sea to find her body. "What do you want me to learn?" she asked.

The brazen maiden snorted. "We already learned it," she said with withering contempt. "What are we, stupid? Don't we remember?"

Louise's eyes widened in shock as the walls closed around her, sealing her in. She screamed and whirled, slamming her fists into the deathly white stone. This was the jail which had held her for so long, trapping her in uselessness, in weakness. She yelled, and pounded on the stone. It cracked, breaking away to reveal an inner core of brass. No further blows could even dent it.

"Let me out, you… you stupid evil twin thing!" she screamed. "Let me out! L-l-let me out!"

The walls began to heat up. At first it was subtle. Quickly, however, she could feel the heat radiating from them, the air scorching her lungs. The lights in the ceiling bled to green, and brightened. She could see them through her closed eyelids, even when she tried to turn her head away.

Louise felt her clothes ignite, and she screamed in raw agony. "Let me out! Damn you! You st-stupid _void-damned _dog," she managed through scalded lungs. Each breath tasted of metal and with each heartbeat she could feel the stone creeping in to shield her oesophagus.

The fires went out, and naked and seared, each breath pain, she was left in the darkness. Water dripped down from the ceiling and fell upon her, each drop announced by a sizzle. She didn't feel it. She didn't feel anything.

"What are you doing?" she rasped.

There was no response.

She screamed and screamed, more from rage than from the agony which was her existence. She could keep the sandpaper being rasped across her nerves away from her awareness. She couldn't shut down her fury.

There was no response.

Forcing down the pain, she pulled herself to her feet. Reaching out, she could feel the walls around her. Three paces were the space given to her; no more. No door; no windows. Nothing but walls around her.

She beat and beat on the walls, leaving them coated in sizzling blood. She ranted and she raved and she screamed. And then she stopped.

No. She was being ridiculous, Louise realised, getting control of herself. She had been in this situation before, and last time it had taken her far too long to realise it. She would not make the mistake this time. She would save her strength and bide her time, knowing that for the moment, she was not mastery of her own destiny. Others controlled what she could and could not do, so – for now – she would accept that, and keep her own council.

She would wait now, just as she had waited then. She would ignore the pain now just as she had ignored the hunger then. She would be serene, calm, and save her strength, so that she might exact her revenge.

There was a sensation in her mind, like a lock turning, and the walls folded into nothingness. Alone, she floated in uttermost darkness. The burning green-brass corona of her magic – her soul, she knew now and could not deny – was her sun in this outer blackness. There was the sensation of movement, a rushing as if she was falling, and no sooner had she thought that than she hit the water.

Her world inverted, and Louise now stood in her bedroom, back at the estate, water spilling off her to drench the rugs. She had grown. Her head brushed the ceiling, and her bed seemed fit for a doll. All the angles were subtly wrong. What she cared more about at this point was finding some clothes, to cover her brass-splotched and stone-marred skin.

Grimacing, Louise dried herself on her bedsheets and picked up her old school mantle from where it lay on the ground. A moment's thought revealed that no, it had never been her school mantle. Her school mantle had been woven cloth. This was metal and crystal and stone and sand and blood-hued wind and a thousand other shades of monstrosity. Head bowed, she fastened the transformed mantle around her neck, and covered herself. There. That was better. And hopefully this strange mantle would not catch on fire.

She whimpered into her fist. That had hurt. That had really hurt. Even when she forced the pain down, she still felt it. She could still feel it now, a nagging sensation and… no! She couldn't let herself be overwhelmed by it. If she did, it would drag her down.

Louise had to keep moving. Something in her was all too clear about it. It didn't sound like the brazen maiden, but there was a certain arrogant certainty about it which was familiar. Maybe it was just her fear of being confined again. Either way, she opened the distorted crystal reflection of her bedroom door, and stepped out into her father's study. Flames rolled from her mouth and eyes, burning green wherever she walked. Warily, she approached the figure seated in the chair.

"Louise," her mother said to her, hands folded on her lap. "Louise, sit down, be quiet, and listen to me."

"But Mother," Louise protested, flames dripping from her fingers to dance in green upon the fine wooden floors, "is now really the time?"

"Of course it is. Now is always the time, especially when – stand up straight! – when I am the one talking to you. Do not try to slack off from your duties and your task." Her mother – whose features were so similar to hers – took her chin in one hand. "Listen to me, Louise. You are a de la Vallière. Duty and honour comes first. And part of that duty consists of mastery of the magical arts."

Behind her mother danced the crimson lady of the storm. With fingers that sublimated into wind with each motion, she stroked their mother's jawline. So close, she said without speaking. As far as Louise could tell, it was the first time this strange not-her had addressed her. So close and yet so far. She is a chained storm. What lies beneath her steel scales, she asked. What secrets does she hide? What keeps clipped her wings? We know she could so easily blow from place to place. Maybe it's her armour. Or maybe we're the weight which keeps her down.

Louise blinked. Her mother was now in full armour, the black steel – which she was beginning to suspect wasn't steel at all – scaled and coiling around her. Her slitted eyes stared down at her daughter. "Nobility, honour, righteousness. This is what I have taught you and that is what I expect from you. Hold to your honour like you grasp a blade, knowing that to let it fall is death. Certainty, moral and deliberate certainty, is all."

And with that, she ate Louise whole. Down her mother's brazen gullet Louise fell, coming to rest face first in a soft yellow rug.

"Ow," Louise said, her voice muffled. She felt almost like screaming, but that would be a rather ridiculous thing to do. Her mother did not usually turn into a dragon and eat her. Why, she couldn't recall a single occurrence when she had done it before.

So _why had her mother turned into a dragon and eaten her?_

Louise decided to scream for a bit. It was cathartic.

"Oh, my sweet lady," a mellifluous voice declared, "whatsoever are you doing here?" Warm arms wrapped around her, and pulled her to her feet.

Marisalon's soft shoulder was a welcome thing to lean on, and the neomah half-carried Louise over to a seat which was almost a throne. She knelt before her. "Oh, my poor princess," she said. "This is hard on you, I know. I can feel the budding of your souls as they weft and weave, your radiance burning ever brighter. What are you doing to yourself?"

Louise blinked, trying to bring her thoughts into a semblance of order. "Is that you, Marisalon," she managed, "or is this just a dream?"

The neomah's dark eyes widened momentarily, as she considered this. "I do not know," she said honestly, tapping one lavender finger against her full lips. "I think I'm me, but maybe the me I think I am is just something which exists in service to you. Maybe I ceased to be me when I became but the fourth light among the greater being that is you."

Louise was feeling altogether too woozy to make sense of that. Except Marisalon was calling her a greater being. Which was correct, but probably meant she wanted something from her.

Blearily she looked around the room, and realised that, beneath the strange and lavish coverings, it appeared to be her bedroom at the Academy. Though she was fairly sure that her bedroom in the Academy had not looked down over an indigo sea smeared with bright stains, and likewise it had not had a large fuelless fire burning in the centre of the room. She inhaled, and noticed that the familiar smell of her bedroom was overlain with a metallic scent a little bit like blood. A mewling thing which looked a little bit like a cat and a little bit like a dog, but was neither, rubbed up against her leg and then curled up on the rug. It was joined by other beasts which seemed to partake of many natures, their flesh woven into a seamless whole by God-knew-what.

"I made myself at home," Marisalon said shamelessly. "Oh dear. It was very hard for you, the last step. It took so very long for you to accept it." There was a wry note in her voice as she added, "I was there for it."

Louise flinched away from the touch against her bare forearm, only to find it soft and warm. Carefully, delicately, Marisalon wiped away the soot and the burnt skin and the blood with a sponge, leaving her flesh clean and already closing up. She was using some kind of scented oil for this, but Louise could not recognise

"Ow," Louise said, more out of habit than necessity when the neomah's hand slipped. "Not that this isn't nice," she hastened to add, as Marisalon cleaned off her face. "This… having someone pay attention to me feels nice. In civilised surroundings. And… and no one is trying to kill me." She tried not to shiver. The last bath she had taken – in a proper bath with warm water – had been in that first night in the Pale Tower. The best she had managed since was lakewater. She would kill for one right now.

Marisalon spun her around, revealing that apparently her room connected onto the noble baths at the Academy. "Please don't protest about the inconsistency," she said. "This is your mind, not mine." Taking Louise's hand, she led her into the water, and began to wash her roughly cut hair for her.

"I made a mess of my hair," Louise said weakly. "I had to. I needed to hide."

"Yes, you did, my princess."

"But I didn't want to," Louise said, sinking down into the water. She could see her reflection. "I'm… I'm ugly now. It was always my best feature and it had taken me years to get it that long and… and I cut it off and burned it."

"My fair princess," Marisalon said, "I have always told you that you are beautiful. You are but young, and this pains you. You feel that you are inadequate. Your heart shakes within your chest. But when you rage, when you command, when you danced with your husband-to-be and when you left burned corpses behind you, you also left your feelings of inadequacy behind you. Why should you not do that about this?"

Louise chose not to answer. She didn't want to think about that. She had liked her hair. "Tell me more about the inhabitants of the City and how to summon them," she demanded, trying to change the topic.

She could feel Marisalon's amused chuckle against her skin. "Ah. Any particular reason for that, my fair princess?"

"You've already taught me how to summon the sesselja and the agatae," Louise said, shifting in the water. She was still wearing her mantle, and she played with the not-fabric, noticing how it felt the same as it had been when dry. "But you've mentioned so many other species. And maybe one of them might be something I can use to get off this island. Something which means I don't have to rely on what the brazen… never mind."

When she twisted, she caught what she was fairly sure was a contemplative look in her head-familiar's eyes. It was somewhat hard to tell, because she wasn't the best at reading the expression of eyes which were solid black, with no sclera or iris. "Very well; as you wish," Marisalon said. "We shall begin, then, with the marottes and the summoning thereof."

They did not stop there. Their path took them through the metody, the gilmyne, the anglyaka, and many more even as Marisalon lavished attention on her mistress. It was peaceful and it was quiet and it was warm, and Louise had missed all those things recently. It reminded her that she wanted to be back at the Academy. It had never been the learning which she had hated. It had only been her own incapacity, and the other students. But this reminded her of when she had found a quiet bit in the library and a history book, and had been able to sink into a world where it didn't matter that she couldn't do proper magic.

Only now she could.

"It's almost time for you to go," Marisalon said eventually, drying her off.

Louise smiled back at her head-familiar. "I know," she said, and she did know. It just felt right. She felt clean. She felt prepared. She felt beautiful again. She could face Princess Henrietta looking like this. "Marisalon," she said, hesitantly. She wasn't sure how to put this. "I just… I…" she bit her lip, and took a deep breath, feeling herself blushing. "I'm not sure how… that is, I'm not sure if I've said this properly, but. But." She screwed her eyes shut. "Thank you," she blurted out. "Not just for this and now. For everything. You've certainly been an… um. An education. In more ways than one."

The neomah beamed at that, and Louise's heart rose. "Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to let you get away with being a perverted head-familiar any more than normal!" she said hotly, to cover her feelings. She took another breath. "I'll be off."

"Not quite yet, my princess," Marisalon said, squeezing her hand. "I know how much this matters to you, and I do not know what you will face next. I have something for you." Carefully, she knelt, and fastened a belly-wrap made of soft green cloth under the mantle. "You should be more comfortable in yourself like this, at least. And… and well, it'll help if you end up in a snowstorm or something."

"Do you know what's coming next?" Louise asked. She took a breath. "Please tell me."

"I can feel the echoes in your greater self," the neomah said simply. "Remember what happened in the chrysalis? Echoes of that still whisper in you, and now those echoes have become screams. I know enough to know that you-I-we are coming to a tipping point."

"That's not very useful," Louise said, with more grumpiness than she felt.

"I know," Marisalon said gravely. "It really isn't that helpful, but it's the best I can do. You dance a dance which would have burned me alive had I reached for it when I was not a part of you, and I don't know the steps." She leant in, and gave Louise a lingering, clinging hug. "Please, my fair princess," she said, with just a hint of mischief in her dark eyes, "don't get yourself killed. I'd take that as a personal favour. And maybe see if you can find a way to give me back my body more often. I'm very fond of it." A grin emerged. "It's a lot of fun." She spun Louise around, and gave her a pat on the back. "Off you go," she said. "We both know you have a long way to go, don't we?"

And indeed, Louise did know that, as she stared out of the gates of the Academy of Magic, to the green countryside before her. Holding her mantle tight around her, she set off on her journey beside the Griffin Knights. The landscape moved quickly, each step flickering and flashing, but she ignored it. She had done this before.

Vaulting a wall and stepping over an old piece of driftwood, she dropped down into the nave of the ruined church where first fire had burned green when she prayed. She could smell the reek of the earth wyrm's blood and the ruined and rot, but when she turned, she was face to face with the musketeers who – God, she couldn't remember their names. Anne-Sophie, hadn't one of them been? Or was it Anne-Maria?

Then the Dragonblooded burst in through the door. Helplessly, she watched as the corporal died, and felt the warm blood against her face.

Her panicked flight was filled with nightmares and violence. Blood sprayed in arcs as she punched and kicked at sinister figures which cracked and crumpled like china dolls. Exhausted, she managed to leap onto the ship which sailed through the streets, and gazed down as the ground fell away.

A dark room was her next destination, but in place of a bed there was a door to New Castle. With some reluctance, Louise stepped through, to cheers from the waiting Albionese nobles. She could see the brave expressions on their faces, and she knew that within hours, most of them would be dead.

"Oh, you're here again," said Princess Sophia, taking her hand and pulling her away from the crowd. "Where are you? What are you doing?"

Louise blinked. "I don't know," she managed. "I think…"

"Did the birds find you?" the little girl said, tugging harder. "Come on, you need to escape."

The thud of the bombardment picked up, shaking dust from the walls and making the furniture dance.

"There hasn't been any word of me," the princess said. "Nothing in the journals of the Republicans and no talks that you've heard. Where do you think they took me? I think I'm in the hands of Sheffield, don't you?"

Louise nodded. That sounded like something that _thing _would do, she thought, as Sophia pulled her off the road, and they began to wade through the swamps, trying to escape from Londinium. There was something wrong here, and it took Louise precious moments to realise what it was.

"No, wait," Louise protested. "This isn't what happened."

The little girl stopped. "I know," she whispered. "But I want to be free. I don't want to be in her hands."

"I don't understand," Louise said. She blinked. "Is this… are you you? Or is this some kind of," she searched for words, "guilt-thing for failing to save you?"

Princess Sophia sniffled. "I don't know," she breathed. She squirmed out of Louise's grip, and ran off, disappearing into a sudden fog.

"Sophia!" Louise called out. "Where did you go? Where are you?"

There was no answer. There was only the sound of artillery blasts, coming nearer and nearer. And now that Louise paid attention, it was not fog. It was sand and the dust of ruined buildings, thick and choking. When it cleared, she stood at the gates of the Pale Tower. She turned to leave, and found that she was now inside its pale depths. Running, heart pounding, she tried to flee. She didn't want to end up in that cell again. She couldn't!

And she didn't. Her path led her down into the depths of the building, steps spiralling down. All around her was death and destruction. Blood stained the walls and bodies lay like childish toys, discarded by a little lordling.

In the end, her path led her down – as she suspected it would –to Sheffield's basement. And in the centre of the floor, handle proffering itself to her, was her husband's blade.

"Take me," it told her happily. "You've earned it."

Louise closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Her hand closed around its handle.

And then all the lights went out.

Fire crackled in front of her, and she flinched, her arm going to cover her eyes. She felt the heat wash across her, and stepped back, sand wet under her toes. It was joined by the roar of a waterfall, the thunder of a landslide, the howl of the wind and the creaking of the deep dark woods.

Five inhuman figures stood before her on the damp ground, illuminated in a pool of light. Their faceless helms and sleek coloured lines were alien to the Halkeginian eye, and showed that they were from another place. They caught sight of Louise, raised their weapons, and then faded away.

"They're waiting for us," the brazen maiden whispered from beside her, part of the whispering crowd of not-hers who each waited for their turn. Louise could feel the heat radiating from her first, strongest warped duplicate. "Traitors. Murderers. They want to kill us. Who knows what plans they have for Tristain? They should not be here… and yet they are. They were stronger than us. They'll try to kill us again if we go back. If they know we're alive. Things like them killed the golden tyrant who had this power before, and she was mightier than us."

"I can fight them!" Louise protested.

"We will probably die," the maiden countered.

"And then what of our child?" the gravid mother asked, her hand chill against Louise's. "What of the child who grows within us? Either they will die, or they will be left without a mother. We are oh so very scared of this, and take little joy in the prospect."

Louise squared her jaw. "I'm not pregnant! You're just… it was only once! We didn't even do it again on our wedding night!"

"We don't know that we're not," the gravid mother said, the layers of ice encrusting her crackling as she gently gestured. "After all, do we not love him? Does that not make it more likely?"

"I don't want to have a child! Not yet!"

"Ah," the not-her said, smiling kindly, "but we also do not want to not be pregnant. If he is dead, then this will be the last bit of him that remains."

"I still shouldn't have done it," Louise whispered. "It was a moral-"

"Weakness. Failure. That's what we are." The blue-robed goddess fell to her knees, her hair pouring down over her face and merging with the wet sand on the ground. Behind her, the darkness flickered, images lightning-flashing in the night. "We couldn't save Wardes. We couldn't save Prince Cearl. We couldn't save Princess Sophia. Everything we valued on this trip has turned to ash and dust."

"We… I mean, I destroyed their fleet!" Louise protested, heart sinking. How could this cursed not-her so well express the thing that had been nagging at her, which she hadn't even been willing to talk to Marisalon about?

"Did we? What if they have more? And for all that we may have destroyed the ships," the blue-robed goddess said, tears of sand leaking from her eyes, "we did nothing to solve the root problem. Cromwell is still alive. What if he merely uses this as another excuse for war? What if he blames us and attacks Tristain because of this? All our aims, all our principles, have been blown away in the wind. Force has made them meaningless."

"They're… no! They're not meaningless," Louise said, her breath catching in her throat.

Everything is meaningless. Our world is changing, the crimson lady of the storm said with just an elegant tilt of her head as she stepped out of the shadows. She moved like a dancer, albeit a dancer carrying a blade dripping with blood. We cannot say what tomorrow will bring. We cannot even say what today will bring. We live on the edge of a blade, and to make a mistake is to fall. It's exhilarating, isn't it?

"No, it's not," Louise whispered. Lied. Because it was exhilarating. Not the nervous tension, not the moments of waiting – no, they were a little hell in their own way. But what did bring her heart to beating, what did leave her feeling more alive than she could remember were the moments of danger. The moments when she drew a blade and lashed out, or when the whole world seemed to freeze when someone she hadn't noticed took a shot at her.

The crimson lady of the storm giggled, the motion sending her pink hair flicking through the air. We're so cute when we don't tell the truth, she said in her un-voice. And so funny too! We're just a little bit scared because of our old childish attachments, that's all. But really, we do need to grow up a bit and realise that we're acting like we're five again by not liking the uncertainty. We're not some little baby who needs Mother to tell us where to go and what to do. Not anymore.

"We cannot trust our own mind," sang the woman of the symmetries, taking Louise by the chin and forcing her to stare into eyes that burned. "What will we do then, when others call us crazy? What will we do if they know we went mad not once, but twice? How did we survive in the swamp, when the golden tyrant seized our mind? Why can we not stop thinking about this?"

Merely saying these words seemed to distress the not-her, the crystalline shapes that orbited her buzzing around in swift trajectories. "Madness! What will we do if we cannot trust ourselves? What can we do? Without control, without our minds, without our duty and our honour; we are nothing. Mother and father have taught us that much."

"ah," said her shadow, embracing her from behind, "but look ahead of you."

There was a pale face in the darkness, lit by purple light. The woman before Louise was dressed all in black, and so her head appeared to float in place.

"the sheffield-thing," hissed her shadow. "she won't forget or forgive. she has our staff of destruction. and she'll want to take us back. back into imprisonment. she'll try even harder to stop us escaping. no escape! no freedom!"

A final not-her joined the six others, and it was one Louise had not seen before. Grey was her hair and her skin, and she rippled slightly when seen out of the corner of the eye. She wore simple clothes, dribs and drags akin to those which Louise had salvaged from those Albionese soldiers she had killed. Those garments too were colourless. She smiled too-broadly, revealing finger-length rows of needle teeth and a pale tongue which licked around her mouth, far longer and more prehensile than any natural organ. But it was her eyes which drew an onlooker, for amidst her monstrosity and her monotone beauty the irises were splashes of mad brilliant technicolour, made all the more gorgeous for the contrast they brought to her appearance.

Her long fingers stroked the jaw of Viscount Wardes who sat before her like a cut-string puppet, colourless plants growing all over him. She played with his grey hair just as she did her own.

"And what of Jean-Jacques?" the bright-eyed girl said. "We're scared of him. We're scared for him. If he's dead, we're a widow so soon, before we could enjoy him and his company. We can't be a widow at sixteen. We _can't_. But if he's alive, then our life is going to change and we don't know what will happen. We won't be able to just stay where we are. He'll have his own aims, his own wants, and we won't just be a school girl. He'll want to do things we don't want to, or he won't tell us things," she said, glowering. "Why did he have to show up? Why did he have to disrupt our lives? Why did… why did he not even had the decency to give us the certainty whether he's dead!"

Louise had had enough. She filled her lungs, and roared, "Shut up!"

The gaggle of monstrous girls before her fell silent.

The brazen maiden reached out, and touched Louise on the brow with one burning finger. The smell of hot metal and scorched flesh filled the air, and for a moment Louise's vision turned grey with pain. She forced it down.

"You can burn me if you want," she told the twisted reflection of her own face. "I stood against the Dead when I could have fled. I burned Londinium and Port's Mouth. I faced the Dragonblooded in La Rochelle. And you're just a dream. I've faced all of them. None of them have beaten me. None of them are going to beat me."

She swallowed. "If Wardes is dead. I'll cry and life will go on. If I'm pregnant, I'll bring up my child as best I can. I am changing and it scares me, but womenhood was scary too and I got through it. I haven't failed Princess Henrietta or my mother, and I can take pride in that. I don't know who that ancient tyrant in my head is and I don't care. This is my body. I'm not going to let her use it.

"And the Sheffield-thing or those Dragon-blooded? If they get in my way again, I'll kill them. You're just a dream. Get out of my way."

"No, I'm not a dream," the maiden said, the corners of her lips curling up. "I'm you. We're scared of that, aren't we?" She began to reach out again.

Louise grabbed her hand, knuckles whitening as she squeezed the burning hand and felt her flesh char. "Don't touch me," she grated, grabbing the other hand, eyes blurring from the agony. She forced any trace of pain from her voice. "I did not give you permission to do so. If you're part of me, you're only a little bit. The others are part of me too. Which means I'm _more _than any of you." She gritted her jaw and leaned forwards. "I'm more than all of you."

Her own metallic face leaned in, and kissed her chastely on the brow. "Well _done_," the maiden exhaled in breath that reeked of hot metal even as Louise felt her skin char from that kiss. "We will not let the base terror of the peasantry overcome us. We are more than that. We are mightier than that." And with that said, the brazen maiden melted away.

With one hand, Louise reached up, and felt the burn-scar which marked her brow between her eyes. She could feel the power within, beating. It was the beat of her own heart.

Burning light, the rosy hue of the sunrise dawned before her. There was a figure standing there, cast in silhouette. Louise stumbled towards her, across sand.

"Stop!" the other woman commanded. "Not a step more, demon-slave."

Louise blinked. Everything was going blurry and the world was all… all bright and fuzzy and hurty. Her head was pounding.

"And there's one thing you're scared of that you were too scared to address. Too weak," the silhouetted woman said to her, contempt in her voice. "You're right to be scared of it. You think you're becoming less human. You think you're changing, and you're scared of what you're giving up for power.

"You're right to be scared," the woman hissed. "Weak. That's what you are. You're weak just like Gorol and the other pathetic _traitors _who sold their mind, body and souls to the crippled maimed titans who _we _defeated. Your master might let you have the illusion that you're not his good little doll, but the Yozis _own _you. You've sold out the glory of the sun for a pittance. You betrayed him. You betrayed me. You betrayed humanity. You betrayed _yourself_."

Louise gasped for air. Each word was hitting her like a slap. She… what… she hadn't done any of that, had she? She… she felt sick and dizzy and a bit of her was just sure that whoever this was, this had been whoever had stolen her body in Londinium. She could remember dribs and drabs of what had happened, seeping into her mind as if a half-remembered dream. And she had no idea what the other woman was talking about. Something – someone? – was shouting at the back of her head, and her skull felt like it was spinning in place under her skin while also remaining still.

She collapsed.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Louise blinked heavily, rubbing her eyes. She felt exhausted. She felt sick and tired and headachy. She wasn't dressed in a wondrous mantle and a girdle of soft green cloth; no, her filthy bloodstained buff jacket was tied around her neck with the arms and she had wrapped her tunic around her waist. She felt ugly and smelly, covered in blood and dried salt and the remains of what she had eaten.

And the silhouetted woman she thought she had been talking to was just a pillar of wind-eroded rock, a shadow against the pre-dawn light.

She looked around in confusion, head throbbing. She was nearly at the water's edge. She wasn't even sure how she had got here. Last thing she remembered, she had fallen asleep in the cave. Which she had barricaded up. A glance behind her, and she found she was on the other side of the island entirely.

Her head swam. She could feel, at the back of her mind, the surge of thoughts and emotions and recollections which hovered at the edge of comprehension. They wanted her to… no, they didn't want her to do anything. They were just memories, nothing more. _She _was the one who wanted to dive into them, to accept those recollections of God-knew-how-long-ago into herself and thus be lost.

"I know you," she whispered to the dead woman in her head. "You're wrong." She could feel her nails digging into her palms. "I'm _nobody's _slave. I choose to follow Princess Henrietta, to act in the correct manner for my country, because my honour demands it of me. I am not a monster! I'm… I'm a mage of the de la Vallière family and-"

No. She couldn't live that lie anymore. It was time to wake up. She couldn't say that. Not anymore. Not after everything she'd done. Not after everything she'd seen. She'd faced the powerlessness of captivity, learned things she never thought she would, travelled across the land and faced so many fears, old and new. By her hands, Londinium and Port's Mouth had burned.

She sagged down to her knees. "I'm not a monster," she whispered. "But I don't know what I am."

The wind picked up, a chill breeze coming in from the north smelling of salt and cold mornings.

Louise let the tears come – but they didn't, did they? "I can't cry," she whispered. "My fingernails are metal. I scab in stone and bronze. My skin can take a knife blow. I don't sweat or… or need the toilet. I don't need to sleep. I don't feel pain if I don't want to. I feel more at home in the w-water than the land. I have a perverted head familiar and some ancient terrible tyrant ghost in my head." She took a deep, shuddering sigh. "I don't… I don't know what I am," she whispered. "I just wanted to be a normal mage."

She swallowed. "But I know what I'm not," she said, steel in her voice. "And everyone else will know it too. There was a little girl who cried and fretted because she was afraid she was going to fail at her last chance to summon the familiar she'd always dreamed of. A little girl whose spells never worked no matter how hard she tried. A little girl who was a failure. A Zero."

Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, the Zero, closed her eyes for the last time.

* * *

{0}

* * *

On a wave-worn sandbank off the coast of Tristain, a woman sat with closed eyes and slumped shoulders, beaten and battered but resolutely unbroken. A long sigh escaped her, and her jaw firmed.

"I'm not that girl," she whispered.

Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière opened her eyes, staring out at the world with the gaze of the newborn. And to the east, just for a moment, the rising sun burned green.

* * *

{0}


	24. Epilogue: Le Roi est Fou

**A Green Sun Illuminates the Void**

**Epilogue: Le Roi est Fou**

* * *

{0}

* * *

The city of Versailles was sweltering in the hot summer sun. The streets of the Gallian capital baked in the heat as it shone mercilessly down from on high. A heat haze shimmered above every scorching surface, and roof tiles hissed as the last remnants of the morning dampness evaporated from the grime and the muck which the smoke of the city deposited. The stench was grotesque. All along the river, dredgers and cleansers worked to try to keep the river clean, but all their efforts were failing to change it from a putrescent shade of green-brown.

It was for that reason that the royal palace was not located in the city. Instead, it was located two hours' ride upstream of the city, sprawling around and even over the river on stone pillars raised from the depths. It was the size of a small city in its own right, white stone topped with blue tiles rising from sprawling gardens and lakes.

Princess Charlotte Helene Orléans de Gallia, the duchess of Orleans, was in no place to appreciate the beauty of her environs. She knelt before her uncle on chill marble tiles, waiting for him to acknowledge her presence. The blue stained glass in the windows cast everything in this room in a somewhat surreal light, painting her pale skin a similar shade to her page-boy cut hair. She had been here for quarter of an hour, and her muscles were shaking with fatigue. Still, to address the king without permission would invite punishment, and she had no desire to be reprimanded at length.

She tried to focus on the fuzzy middle distance. She was not permitted, by the king's command, to wear her glasses in his presence. Maybe it was to prevent her from seeing things not permitted to her. More likely, it was just another petty indignity.

The king had one leg hooked over the arm of his throne, and had his chin propped on one hand while the other held a book. He was dressed in mid-blue, a shade darker than his hair, but the velvet was slightly mussed and there were food stains on his sleeves. In his pale, delicate features and blue hair and almond-shaped eyes, he was most distinctly a member of the Gallian royal family. He licked his thumb and forefinger, and turned the page. "Ah, Charlotte," he said, apparently only just noticing her, "there you are. Tell me, what do you think of the Bosque Strategy?"

Charlotte blinked, mind whirring. "I do not know, your majesty," she answered hesitantly.

"Oh, of course you do! You know, lead with an advance of your firemen down the right side of the board, to draw out their watermen, before sweeping in with your earthmen to deprive them of water and free-up a clear line of attack for fire. Of course, then they usually support their watermen with their windmen." He tapped the book. "It is a problem. If misjudged, your nobles and even your royal pieces might be exposed. But that might be part of your plan. Since the Bosque Strategy is a fairly conventional opening gambit, you might want to move your princess out, as she can break their water-wind supporting duet as long as they haven't moved a count or a dragon to prevent you from rolling up their water-wind footman lines from behind. Or possibly you might even be able to get your dextrous duke in to smash up their duet, if you sacrifice a footman to free up that line of attack. Of course, that risks your duke if they have counts or their prince in that line."

"I have not played crux since I was a little girl, your majesty," Charlotte said.

The king pouted. "Oh, you're so boring," he said childishly. "Why are you even here, if you don't want to talk about crux? Can't you see I was reading?"

Charlotte swallowed. She wasn't sure what he was doing, and he was so very mercurial. "Your majesty, you requested that I obtain certain things from Tristain for you. I have done so."

King Joseph frowned at her, and her heart sunk. "I did?" he said, before raising one finger. "Wait. Wait, no. No, I have it, yes. Yes! Yes I did! Hurrah! Oh, I do so hope that you are fine!"

Charlotte could safely say that this was both the safest and easiest task that the throne of Gallia had asked of her, and so murmured a quiet pleasantry to say that he was too kind to be concerned about her wellbeing.

"Of course I'm too kind," the king said happily. "I detest you," he said in the same tone of voice. "You know you're not always going to be this lucky. Someday, some moment, you're going to slip up, and that'll be it for you. I wonder if you'll die bleeding out in some foreign field, trying to hold your guts in, or whether your death will be quieter and closer to home, when those nobles who pretend to obey me get sick of you being someone who'll do what I say, and poison you. Either way, I doubt I'll care. Oh, and my dear niece," he added, as a casual afterthought. "Those things I just said about you?"

"Yes, your majesty," Tabitha said, trying not to shake. She felt the air shift, and was sure that someone had just entered the room behind her, moving quietly.

"That was just a joke. That's not what I feel at all! My goodness, well done! I am pleased with you!" He clapped his hands sharply. "So! My present! Diamant! Fetch!"

From behind his throne, something stirred. It resembled a hunting dog, but it was cast entirely in transparent crystal which revealed the earthstone organs within. Two rubies served as its eyes, and its teeth were steel blades. Crystal claws clicking on the marble floor, it approached the princess, growling like a finger on a wine glass.

Charlotte reached down to the purse at her belt, and the growling intensified. Carefully, she unhooked the pouch, and proffered it to the crystal dog. It tilted its head at her, still snarling, then took it. Heading back to its master, it deposited the purse obediently in his hand before returning to its quiescent, statue-like rest state.

Sprawled out on his throne, the king put down his book and fished out the contents of the pouch. A few pink strands of hair flopped out limply.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"That was all I could find, your majesty," the princess said, inclining her head.

"Very nice! Very nice indeed." Joseph glanced at Charlotte for just a moment, before returning his gaze to his prize. "You can go. Do whatever you want to. Although I think your cousin will want to talk to you before you can go back to silly smelly provincial Tristain."

"I will," Princess Isabella said in her clipped, accented tone from behind Charlotte. "But not right now. I'm sure," she added, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she glared down at Charlotte, "my sweet cousin will be more than willing to drop in to visit me, after she has changed into something more comfortable, but I am afraid I must talk with you first, father."

Joseph blew a raspberry. "Why do people keep on distracting me?" he proclaimed to the ceiling. "You're no fun. None of you!" he said, jabbing his finger at Isabella and Charlotte.

"I am most dreadfully sorry, father," Isabella said, "but I fear it is indeed necessary."

"Well… drat!" the king announced. "Drat it all! Fine! Go! Shoo!" he told Charlotte, who gratefully rose. "Go on and head back to Tristain when you are done. And, you know," Joseph called out gleefully, "while you are there, if you find another one of those strange golem-men again, I will do very very nice things for you! Next time make sure to keep the head, though! It looks dreadfully ugly in my toy cabinet if it doesn't have a head! It makes it entirely asymmetrical! It looks terrible when posed waltzing with an Albionese grenadier!"

* * *

{0}

* * *

Princess Charlotte returned to her quarters, where she hastily changed into an almost painfully austere dress and mantle. The keeper of the royal wardrobe already had a servant outside her door, to take back the borrowed finery. By the time she was changed, resettling her glasses on the bridge of her nose, she was Tabitha once more.

Taking the basin from one of the servants, she tapped it with her wand, and splashed now ice-cold water over her face. Drying it, she handed the towel back, and headed down to the carnivores' wing of the royal stables.

"Here you are, good girl," she whispered to her dragon in High Gallian, who was busy tearing into a horse carcass. The dragon glared at her, and redoubled her consumption, wolfing down the remnants while daring Tabitha to try to disrupt her meal.

"She's a right beast," one of the handlers said, standing beside her. "Beautiful wind dragon, but has that kinda nasty streak of an overgrown kitten." The woman shook her head. "If she wasn't your familiar, I'd say she's too hard to handle for a new dragoon like you."

"Sylphid?" Tabitha asked, shifting to Low Gallian. "No. She is just playful."

"Yes," the handler said darkly. "Playful dragons break bones. Will you be wanting to go, your grace?"

"Just for a short flight, once Sylphid has finished eating," Tabitha said.

"Of course, your grace. I'll prepare the courtyard for a takeoff."

Standing there, listening to the roars and snarls of the animals, Tabitha wished she could stay here. She wished that no one would find her. She wished she was far, far away from Versailles, that she was back at the Academy of Magic in Tristain.

But no. There were duties she had to carry out. Oaths she had sworn. Proprieties which had to be obeyed.

She heard the clattering of her approaching dragon before she saw her, bounding along ahead of the ostlers nervously trailing behind with little care to their attempts to keep her under control. Dragons could not smile, but the beast's expressive eyes crinkled up, and Tabitha nearly smiled too. Picking her way over the courtyard, she mounted, and the handlers scattered.

Without a word from her, her dragon took off in a beating of wings which left the banners dancing madly on their poles. Sylphid headed nearly vertically upwards to circle above the royal palace, up in the blue summer sun. It was cooler up here, and Tabitha was thankful. She muttered a spell, which to the untrained eye would only serve to protect her from the wind, but also served to veil her speech.

She felt so much better up here, surrounded by the wind. Down on the ground, she had always felt trapped, limited, constrained. Only since she had summoned her familiar, called Irukuwa in her own tongue, had she realised what she was missing.

"Are you in trouble?" her dragon asked, in her accented High Gallian.

"I'm fine," Tabitha replied.

Irukuwu exhaled, shuddering beneath her. "Really?" she asked, twisting her head back. "Because you don't sound fine. Are you just lying to me and saying that you're fine when you're really not fine? Because if you're not really fine you should tell me. Oooh! Did they find out that you kept the head of the golem-man?"

"No."

"Oh, that's good," Irukuwa said happily. "I like the head. It's the bestest best head ever! The tongue was very very tasty, and the way you can see things in the dark when you wear it is so nice! We should go find more of those armoured funny-men! That way, I can get my own one!"

"You're a dragon," Tabitha said, a faint smile creeping onto her lips despite herself. "It wouldn't fit you."

The great beast nodded. "Mmm hmm!" she said. "Except when I was being a fake human, and imagine what I could steal for you if I was invisible! Anyway, that would mean I had scales when I was being a human, and that's properly natural." Irukuwa harrumphed, then huffed excitedly. "Oh! Oh! If you're not in trouble because you kept the head, that means your cousin was mean to you again! Or does she have a new mission thing?"

Tabitha sighed, and hugged her dragon's neck. "Yes," she said, simply.

"You don't like her. Well, that's good. I don't like her too!" Irukuwa gave the series of rising and falling cries which was her laughter. "She's got a really big forehead! It's as big as the moon! It's as big as the blue moon when it's being the closer moon and being bigger than the red moon when it's being the closer one! And I bet she has a big tasty brain in there. I could eat her brain for you!"

"No eating my cousin." Tabitha paused for a moment. "I'd get in trouble," she added, sadly.

"Aww. Not even a little bit? I wouldn't eat all of her! Like… hardly any of her!"

"Just the nice bits?"

Irukuwa was silent for a moment, trying to decide if this was a trick question. "Yes?" she tried. "I mean, why would I eat the icky bits?"

"Because you were hungry?" Tabitha said drily. Despite that, there was a faint smile on her lips. "You can eat her when I say. But only if you don't ask until I tell you to," she said.

"Oooh! Heart and tongue and brain yay! I promise promise promise you won't hear a word from me about it until it's time!" Irukuwa said happily, banking. "Can I eat her familiar, then? It'd just be a mouthful and it's an annoying little monkey-thing! I bet we could even replace it with another jabbering little monkey-thing and she wouldn't know the difference!"

"No."

"Aww." She paused. "Are you feeling better?" she asked. "Flying always makes you feel better, but we're going to have land at some point or you'll get in more trouble. And you keep saying you don't want to come back to my home and live there instead."

Tabitha just hung onto her neck. "I'm as ready as I'll be," she said, quietly.

The dragon banked, and descended once more, smoothly landing in the courtyard in front of a heavy stone fortification which could not disguise its nature with whitewash and delicate blue tiles on the roof. There were no guards to welcome her, no ostlers to take her dragon to the stables. There was a high wall, covered in brambles and thorns which surrounded this fortification. It was the oldest building, the one which the rest of the palace had grown from, and it showed its age.

Few servants dwelt inside this building. Of them, most were crippled and maimed in some way, their loyalty and silence bought by the generous treatment the highest families of Gallia gave them. An old soldier, one eye covered by an eyepatch and one hand a hook, waited at the entrance, clumsily inclining his head to Tabitha. She did not acknowledge him. She paused at the entrance, took a single quick breath, and stepped in.

The building smelt of soap and lime and just a hint of mildew and old rust.

"I am here," she said to the man waiting for her inside. His formal dress was twenty years out of date, and shiny with age. It barely fit him, because he was built like a brick wall, and had developed a paunch since he originally had purchased it. It made him look a little like a clown, Tabitha considered, and that was an impression not helped by his unfashionable pointed shoes.

"Welcome, your grace," the man who kept the royal madhouse said. "You were not expected until later."

Tabitha did not let any of her emotions show on her face. "I am here," she repeated.

"Josette! Josette!" the madhouse keeper called out. "Get down here, girl!"

"Coming, father!" A teenage girl clattered down the stairs in cogs, and her eyes widened at the sight of Tabitha. She quickly curtseyed, reddened hands coarsened by cheap soap lifting her painfully clean and simple skirts. "Oh… um, your highness, welcome. Will you," she swallowed, "want to be going up to the Optican Tower?"

"Yes," Tabitha said tersely. "Immediately. Please do not call me 'your highness'. It is not correct."

The other girl nodded, her short brown hair bouncing in its bun. They were much of a height, but her skin was the pale of someone who didn't see enough sunlight, while Tabitha's was the almost-translucent paleness which was a mark of the Gallian royal family. "As you wish, your hi… I mean, milady? Your grace?"

"That will do."

Picking up a lantern, the girl Josette led Tabitha up to a solid double gate, where an old woman with wooden stumps for legs sat at a desk.

"Two heading to the Optican, Sali," the girl told her.

"Right you are," the old woman said, her pen scratching as she wrote down the entries in the log book. She pulled a lever, unbolting the first gate.

It was old routine for Tabitha by now. Still, the slamming of the iron door behind them was like the closing of a jail cell. In a sense, it was. The arrangement was such that even if an inmate got loose, there was no way they could slip through the double-layer of doors.

God help someone trapped in with the dirty little secrets of the lords of Gallia, for no one else would.

{0}

Princess Isabella resisted the urge to rub her temples as she stared at the board before her. She was a passable crux player, and considering the skills of the gentlemen she usually played against, that made her pretty good by any objective standard.

Her father, however, was in an entirely different league. And was being difficult, because he was insisting that she needed to beat him before he would discuss the simple matter she wanted his approval for.

This was a problem. She could usually only manage to beat him two games out of nine, and suspected strongly that at least one of those victories was because he let her win. This was both insulting to her ego, and rather worrying when she just wanted his dratted approval for something.

Also, he was _humming_. The same part of one ditty, over and over again.

And he was tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair in an oddly lilting, not quite rhythmical pattern. Tap-tappa-tap-tap-pause-tap-tap. Tap-tappa-tap-tap-pause-tap-tap. Tap-tappa-tap-tap-pause-tap-pause-pause-pause-tap.

It was doing her head in.

"Come on!" her father drawled. "Hurry up!"

Biting her lip, Isabella moved one of her dukes up, to threaten the wind-reinforced firemen he was placing on the right flank.

Click-click. His hand lashed out without a second's pause for thought, moving his prince to threaten her duke. She moved the piece to safety, only for another swift movement to follow as the prince picked off one of her earthmen she'd been trying to reinforce with a waterman.

Isabella sighed. She only had one earthman left, and now she could see the shape of the advancing front of watermen which were going to press her earthless left flank.

"Your mind really isn't on your game today, daughter dearest," her father said happily. "You normally wouldn't be so sloppy!" He paused. "Your position isn't all that secure, my daughter," King Joseph said. His attempt to be stern was somewhat ruined by the foolish grin still on his face. "I choose my heir, and should you treat me like some doddering idiot, I could choose your cousin instead."

"I understand, respected father," Isabella said chillily, inclining her head.

"Of course, I won't," Joseph said, his smile widening, "but please try to act as if that's an outside possibility. It makes those wretched lumber barons and those silly little merchants happy."

Isabella managed to recover slightly, but the lack of earth on her left flank was a gaping weak spot and her father pushed it for everything he had. The flank collapsed, and it wasn't long before he took her princess.

Smiling, he deliberately picked the bone figure up. His long fingers cradled it. And then entirely deliberately, he broke its head off.

Isabella froze.

"Oops," Joseph said, still smiling. "Do you want to concede now, my dear, or are you going to keep going?"

Her mind whirred. What was he doing? What did he expect her to say and would it be better for her if she did what he expected or if he surprised her? What did he_want _her to say?

She took a risk, and knocked her own king over. "I can't win," she said bluntly. "I was trying to move her to assassinate that bishop which is supporting the water advance, but," she shrugged, "I did badly."

Joseph laughed, and clapped his hands together. "Yes! Such a tragedy, there. A princess murdered by invaders. I wonder if her father will weep before his capital falls, but no – you had him kill himself! What a touching tale." He rose, and swept away from the crux board, showing it no more attention. Isabella rose, smoothing down her skirts, and followed him.

"Father," she said, "I wished to talk to you about the activities which certain marquises on the border with Tristain had been getting up to. They have been…"

"Uh uh uh," he said.

"But father," she said, pressing on, "they are getting too close to certain inexprimé houses. I suspect that the inexprimé houses are acting on behalf of Mazarin's spies, and with the greatest respect, the border there is…"

"Look! Would you just look at this?" Joseph leant over another one of his game boards. This one had taller, ornamental dolls, shaped to look like various personages of repute from Halkeginia. Joseph picked up his figurine, and held it close to his face, squinting. His expression soured. "I think they got the eyes wrong! In fact, since the eyes used to be right, someone has been sneaking in and changing the eyes! I know it!" He thrust the doll at Isabella. "Look at me!" he said, assuming the same posture as the model. "My eyes don't look like that!"

"No, father," Princess Isabella said. "That would be because your eyes are not tiny sapphires."

"Even though the ladies say they are?" He jutted out his chest. "It's one of my better features. The Madam de Molliere always says so!"

The princess shuddered. "Father, please do not regale me with tales of your mistresses again."

"They really are a lot of fun, though," Joseph said, slumping back down. "You should look to getting some. In fact, consider that a royal order. To be carried out on pain of pain!" He giggled at his joke.

Isabella blinked. "You are ordering me to… acquire mistresses," she said cautiously. "Knowing that I… uh." She coughed. Being the crown princess of Gallia was a wearisome role. "Do you have any… uh, wishes as to how many I should have?" she asked.

"Oh, two or three should be enough," King Joseph said carelessly. "Just make sure you don't get any of them pregnant. Bastards are such an inconvenience. And expensive. You have to go and give the mother a stipend to keep her quiet, and then make sure your daughter doesn't have the child smothered and it's just one inconvenience after another."

His daughter's face was mask-like. "Certainly, father. I will try my utmost to avoid getting any of my mistresses pregnant," she said drily. "I will go seek out some of my friends from school and see if they would be interested in entering my – ahem – service," she added. "Would that be considered sufficient?"

"Sufficient for what?" the king asked, taking off his crown and tossing it from hand to hand. "What was I even talking about?"

"You wanted me to replace the figurine of you," Isabella said quickly. "You were of the well-judged opinion that its eyes look nothing like yours."

"No, I don't think so. I'm quite fond of it." He picked up a dice, and rolled it idly. "Hmm. Five. Isabella, have five of those marquises taken out." He rolled again. "Two. Yes, have two of them publically tried. Have the others murdered."

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Don't be silly, girl. I'll give you sugared plums if you can frame the ones who you arrest so you can confiscate their lands. Oh, and the ones you have murdered should be the ones with the worst fashion taste, or failing that, no heirs. Do you understand?"

"Yes, father," Isabella said, curtseying.

"Go! Be gone! Leave me to my games!"

Gracefully, Isabella let herself out, and managed not to sigh in relief as the door closed behind her. A smile crept onto her lip as a white-furred monkey clambered up onto her shoulder and chittered at her.

"Yes, I suppose it did take longer than expected," she told her familiar, heading towards her offices.

Princess Isabella sighed, and pinched her brow. With care, she shut the doors to her office behind her and unfastened her mantle, carefully hanging it up. Her tiara, she rested on her desk. And having done that, she flopped down into her chair. Her familiar leapt up onto the table, picking up an apple.

"Bother," she muttered to herself. "Bother bother bother. He was in a bad state today." She opened her eyes. "Thank you, Gaston," she told the monkey, who chittered in response.

It wasn't that he was crazy. It would have been all too easy if he was crazy. The Gallian royal family had married cousin to cousin and uncle to niece for too long, and even the occasional influx of new blood from various other families left them prone to various deformities – both of the mind and the flesh. The thirteen great ducal houses of Gallia were all so intermarried and related that they formed one extended family, and Isabella knew her mother's status as not coming from those bloodlines left her a nigh-usurper in the eyes of some of the old nobility. Those dratted old men and women liked her father's alleged insanity, and would no doubt equally like her weak, pliable, all-so-perfect pureblooded cousin on the throne.

Isabella's face wrinkled in a momentary sneer. Charlotte might have been her superior at magic, but that was all she was. She would be a terrible queen… and that was just what those damnable dukes would like.

No, her father played at being feeble-minded, but it was more that he didn't quite seem to be reading from the same book as the rest of the world. And that scared Isabella. It scared her deeply, to her very heart. What if the same madness lived in her? He sometimes threatened her; was he doing it just to keep her off balance, or did he mean it? She didn't know. He had been better, once. Then he changed, and suddenly everything was different. And that was just another change in a life full of them.

Isabella had not been raised at court. She had been raised by her mother until the age of five, and had rarely seen her father – and it had certainly not been a conventional childhood for a princess, even one who was the child of the dullard younger brother who few expected to get the crown. Her mother had not been a Gallian, though she had the look of the family. And then she had been sent away from her mother, to court, and everything had changed.

She had hated this place. She hated that she couldn't speak a word of Gallian and even now still had traces of her mother's accent. She certainly hated her new playmates, who whispered about her behind her back and – when she had finally got some of them to like her – said that their parents said she was her father's bastard, that her real mother was not her father's wife.

She hated them because they weren't precisely wrong. Her mother had married her father, but it hadn't been a Brimiric marriage – and thus was on somewhat shaky grounds in the eyes of the Church. And he had been married to someone else at the time.

Isabella had shown them, though. She'd made her own friends; ones worth associating with even if they weren't the most popular sorts, and then when her father had become king, she had laughed in the faces of all those panicked girls who now wanted to be friends with the crown princess.

She had certainly shown her mean cousin, the perfect little daughter of the glorious warrior prince who had retaken Iberia, what happened when the tables were turned. Charlotte didn't even remember what she had done – for months and months and months – to make Isabella detest her, and she wasn't about to remind her. She wouldn't show weakness in that way.

She was the heir, this was going to be her kingdom, and _no one _was going to be allowed to get in her way. No cousins or bastard half-siblings or troublesome dukes or_anyone _at all.

Isabella sighed, staring out at the window at the sliver of the blue moon visible during the day sky. She idly stroked her familiar. Sometimes she wished she was a little girl again, and didn't have to step carefully in a court of vipers that to a man waited for her to take a step wrong. Things had been better then, when she had been living with her mother and her father hadn't been crazy.

Then she got back to the reports. Her familiar poured her a glass of fruit juice as she read the personal correspondence of the widow of the sadly deceased duc d'Aquitaine.

* * *

{0}

* * *

Lantern in hand, Josette led Tabitha through the madhouse of the high aristocracy.

"Let me out," whispered a woman, scratching at the door. Her voice was breathy, and every time she inhaled she wheezed. "Let me out. Where is the sun? Why can't I see it? Who took the light?" The pale wrinkled face seen through the bars on the cell had milky cataracts and filthy blue hair. One arm was withered and crippled, the fingers on the hand little more than malformed buddings. "Why is everything so quiet?"

Tabitha did not look at the blind old woman, her great aunt, and trailed behind the madhouse keeper's daughter. Other relatives scratched at the walls and whispered through the doors as she passed.

It was so quiet in here. So very quiet. The madmen and madwomen kept their voices down. The two girls walked through white stone corridors. Much of the royal palace was built from the white stone beloved of the dragon-cultists who predated the Brimiric peoples and this asylum was no exception. It swallowed what little sound there was.

"Look what we have here," a young man hissed through cell bars. Josette took a step away from the door, and Tabitha followed her lead. "One little gust. Come join us."

"I don't know what has them so agitated," Josette said, relaxing a little now they had arrived at the stairs which led to the Optican Tower. "They don't usually come to the doors."

It was a long climb up the steep stairs, and the madhouse keeper's daughter was breathing heavily by the time they reached the top. Tabitha was not. She turned, tilting her head. "Sit," she told the other girl, pointing at the chair by the door. "Wait. I may be some time."

"Th-thank you, milady," Josette said, sagging in something which might have been a curtsey. "Thank you for not making me go in there."

Tabitha froze. "What do you mean?" she asked flatly.

"It's… it's not my place to say," Josette stuttered.

"Say it."

Her gaze dropped. "She scares me the most," Josette said, staring at the floor. "She… she talks more than the others. She t-talks to me. In a way she doesn't talk to f-father."

Tabitha's eyes narrowed. "She is not mad in the same way as the others," she said. "Open the door."

"Yes, milady," Josette said obediently.

This room was rather less sparse than the rest of the madhouse. There was a bed, a chair, a table with the remnants of lunch sitting on it, and most prominently a harpsichord. There was a pale-skinned, blue-haired woman sitting at the instrument. Perhaps she had once been beautiful, but her skin and hands were pockmarked by some disease. She never seemed to stop playing, and did not turn around to look at the newcomer. Even when she could not think of a melody, she played – to make noise, if nothing else.

A worn doll sat on top of the harpsichord, its button eyes watching towards the door.

The blue-haired woman pursed her haggard lips, but kept on playing. "Do you hear the girl, Charlotte?" she said to the doll sitting on top of the harpsichord. "What a strange little girl she is. She broke her heart in two when she sipped when she shouldn't have and shattered her cup, and now she drinks from little glass fragments. Her lips are bleeding. Why does she do that?" Up and down her fingers danced, playing perfunctory assonances.

"I have returned, mother," Tabitha said formally. "How are you?"

"Joseph's pet murderer," her mother said coldly. "I won't let you take my Charlotte. I'll kill you if you try." Her fingers danced an angry tune on the harpsichord. "I might not have my wand, but I'll die to keep her safe."

"M-mother, I…" Tabitha swallowed, and tried not to flinch.

"Why doesn't Gallia bear wind? Our emblem should be a bear made out of wind. Or maybe a bear made out of bare earth. Up in my tower, all I can hear is the wind and the singing of birds. Sometimes they scream below, but only for a short while. They silence themselves."

Her mother lowered her head to the doll, talking to it in a stage whisper.

"Maybe she wonders why I keep on talking, Charlotte, even when I know I'm not making any sense. I bet she does. Oh wait, yes, I remember, indeed she does. Don't you, strange little girl? You asked me several times why I kept on talking like this. I have to keep on talking, you see, or I'll end up like the people in the rooms below and really end up crazy. I have to pretend to be insane but not really be crazy, so they'll keep me in this safe place. They tried to poison me first, didn't they Charlotte?" She took one hand from her harpsichord, and rubbed her doll's face. The doll was threadbare and worn, from all the times she had done that before. "Maybe Joseph's pet killer will leave us alone then."

Tabitha squeezed her eyes shut, her courage failing her. "Please," she whispered under her breath. "Mother, please."

"Of course, now I'm here, at least I'm close to all my children. How many did I lose to this place? One? Two? Three? I don't remember. I gave them to this place, all bar one. One way or another. Where do you hide your dirty little secrets, Gallia? Why, here. Why here? And the girl isn't _listening,_ Charlotte," she told the doll. "Why doesn't she listen? She has very good hearing, I know that for a fact, but she doesn't listen.

"She didn't listen to what I told her about Iberia last time. Iberia, I told her about, yes, but she always comes back to take more secrets about what my poor sweet Charles and I found there. Oh, how I wish I was there right now, with Charles." She slammed her hands down on the harpsichord's keys. "I hate this place," she whispered through the dying echoes. "It wants me to be quiet. Or maybe they do. It gets hard to tell sometimes, when she's looking through the door and I remember what I should forget and forget what I should remember and it all runs together like molten wax. There's madness in our family. We've married niece to uncle and cousin to cousin for far, far too long. We wanted to keep the blood of Saint Orieris pure, but there are wicked heretical tales which tell us that she was touched by madness too."

Tabitha smiled a soft, sad smile. It was a smile she would never show outside of this room. "I am sorry for disturbing you," she said formally.

"He killed Charles, didn't he?" her mother said, in the silence. "I remember. Your master. He came back with his strange little girl and he was different. And then Charles' father made your master the heir, not my Charles, even when he was the eldest and the hero of Iberia. And then Charles died."

Tabitha bowed her head. "He killed Father, yes," she admitted. "I'm sure of it."

"Poor, poor Charlotte", her mother told the doll. "A dead father and a crazy mother. I don't know why that strange little girl is crying. Her life can't be as bad as yours. Or mine. Just… just leave us to our grief!" Bringing her hands down, she started to play again.

"Thank you, mother," Tabitha said. "I will go now."

The woman did not turn around, or say another word.

* * *

{0}

* * *

The king of Gallia, the largest of the Brimiric nations, was working with glue and ivory. Holding his breath, he carefully eased with tweezers the strand of pink hair onto the ivory of the painted figurine, and held it there. It blended in perfectly with the pink-dyed cloth fibres already glued to the scalp. He placed the model down, and busied himself tidying away until the glue had dried.

Joseph picked up his brand new piece. A tiny facsimile of Louise de la Vallière, short-haired and scarred, stood on an emerald base. "Now, where are you going to go?" he asked the figurine.

"I don't know, your majesty," he said, raising his voice into a falsetto. "Tee hee. I mean, I know where I am, but I'm not telling."

"That's very impolite, to defy a king in this manner," he told the doll.

"You're not my king, your majesty," he responded.

Joseph laughed. "Well, I suppose that's true enough," he said. "And at least you're somewhat well-mannered in how you address me. I suppose you'll just have to go in the 'out of play' place for now, until I hear where you are again. I was so looking forwards to meeting you, but Sheffield had to let me down."

"I'm not sorry," he said.

"Well, of course you aren't. You were jolly inconvenient, you know that," he scolded the doll. "Such an unrepentant little chit."

Carefully, he placed his Louise de la Vallière outside the board, and stood back. His eyes flicked over his sculpted board. To the east, he picked out the movements of Germanian armies, led by generals and elector-khans alike. The Germanian Emperor, the Khan-of-Khans, posed on a tiny winged horse, his base pyrope and lapis lazuli. Tristain was stacked with figures. To the north-east, two figures stood on smoky quartz and lapis lazuli, their eyes turned to the east. In Bruxelles, the figure of Princess Henrietta loomed over her mother, but Cardinal Mazarin was taller than either of them.

"You're an inconvenient man," Joseph told the cardinal. "Or maybe you're not. Maybe you're playing right into my hands. Do you think I'd oppose the marriage of Henrietta de Tristain to the Iron Dragon. Well, maybe." He picked up a dice, and rolled it, snorting. "Yes, you're right for now. I shall take three actions to oppose it, and then we can roll again. It's always so enchanting to match wits with you. Your queen is such a dull opponent."

"Oh, woe is me, for my husband is dead. I will sit here and cry. Boo hoo hoo," he said in a falsetto.

"See! That's all she ever does," he said in his normal voice. "Hmm. I wonder if Henrietta is so dreadfully dull. Oh well. I'll need to think up a wedding present for her. What do you think she'd like?"

There was a pause.

"Ah, excellent game face, Cardinal," Joseph complimented the figurine. "You really are a worthy adversary."

Another pause.

"A little lacking in courtesy to a king, though," he said, sniffing. "I do understand it is the prerogative of a cardinal to remain silent even in the face of the questioning of a ruling monarch, but there is such thing as manners."

The silence dragged on.

"Ah! You're no fun at all!" he said, carefully placing the figurine down and pouting. "You are not getting into the spirit of things, sir! I have a good mind to burn your wretched little kingdom to the ground!" He sighed. "Though I'd have to execute your queen too, because she'd be exceptionally annoying with her whole 'boo hoo hoo you burned down my capital' and then the Pope would get on my case and I simply cannot be having with that aggravation. Very well! You win this round, cardinal! But I can beat you at the being silent game! If I win, you will surrender immediately; if you win, I shall not invade."

The contest had reached the thirty minute mark when there came a soft knock at the door. After a suitable pause, a beautiful woman entered, clad in blue so pale it was almost white.

"Ah, King Joseph, your most wonderful – and handsome – majesty," the Madam de Molliere, lady of the court and Joseph's official unofficial mistress said. "You wished to see me?"

"Damnation!" he declared. "You win, Cardinal! Very well, I will not invade you. Yet. I didn't say for how long you would remain safe from my armies! Ah ha, got you there!"

"I beg your pardon?"

Joseph flapped his hand. "Oh, never mind."

"My lady sends her greetings and hopes all is well with you," the Madam de Molliere said, curtseying before the king slumped on his throne.

"Ah, madam!" Joseph said, perking up. "So good to see you!" He smiled, and pointed at the little figure of Louise de la Vallière. "Have you seen my new figurine?"

"I have not, and I had thought I was the one who obtained new ones for you," the woman said, frowning.

"I can do things for myself," Joseph said, pouting.

De Molliere smiled. "But it's so much more fun when I do them for you," she told him in a sultry tone, which vanished as her expression shifted to a frown. "I don't recognise who that is," she admitted. "May I?"

"Feel free, madam."

The woman stooped and picked up the pink-haired figure. Her nostrils flared. "One of the daughters of Karin de la Vallière?" she asked. "She has the hair, at least, and something about the face."

"I know! It really is a wonderful little piece of work! As is she, I might add!" Joseph said.

"But what does the emerald mean?" she asked. "I thought I knew your key."

"I know! It's fantastic!"

"I don't follow your meaning, your majesty."

Joseph clapped. "Madam, why don't you look for her place in the plan? Perhaps you can even ask your lady – though I think she would not like the answer! Ah ha! Madam, Louise de la Vallière is something outside your plan! She's something new! Something unpredictable! A force of chaos who makes things better by wrecking everything! She burned Londinium and Port's Mouth, and I almost felt a smidgeon of sadness at such a tragedy!"

He cast his hand over his board. His own figure stood in Versailles, standing on obsidian. So, too, did the Pope stand in the holy city of Roma, in Romalia. And in Albion, the figure of Sheffield stood, holding the banner of Gallia, Princess Sophia of Albion in her custody. "My agent knows the most anyone does about the nature of Louise de la Vallière," he said, smiling. "Why, I'm sure I would share with your lady, if she was just a little more generous with the grants of her servants." He pouted. "I'm a weak king whose subjects are impudent and disobedient. I need things unflinchingly loyal for the wonders and tragedies which are yet to come."

The Madam de Molliere glowered, her beautiful face flickering. "It is not wise to play with milady," she said. "Whatever affection she may hold for you, she sent me to… how shall we say it? Protect her interests. And you are one of her interests, but you are not her only interest upon this orb."

"Oh, I know I'm being dreadfully rude and playing with fire by doing this," Joseph said, a broad smile on his face. "I feel flickers of something which almost might be excitement when you show your fangs and stop being so soft and graceful." He clapped again. "Oh, do it again, do it again."

A smile crept onto her lips. "You're incorrigible," she said. "Very well, your majesty. I will talk with milady."

Joseph pulled himself upright, working his shoulders. "Wonderful," he said. Drawing his wand, he began to chant. His worlds built to a fever pitch, and with a slash, he cut a hole in the world. He bowed. "After you, madam," he said. "Shall we begin?"

"Why, thank you. You can be quite the charmer, considering the flaws of your nature," said his mistress.

Joseph laughed, a high-pitched mirthless titter. "Perhaps, perhaps," he said. "But where would you be without men like me to make the world a more – how shall we put it – interesting place?" He laughed again. "Yes, interesting times are coming indeed."

* * *

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